Patricia Highsmith
Patricia Highsmith
Patricia Highsmithwas an American novelist and short story writer, known for her psychological thrillers, which led to more than two dozen film adaptations. Her first novel, Strangers on a Train, has been adapted for stage and screen numerous times, notably by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951. Highsmith wrote 22 novels, including her series of five novels with Tom Ripley as protagonist, and many short stories. Michael Dirda observed, "Europeans honored her as a psychological novelist, part of an existentialist tradition represented...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth19 January 1921
CountryUnited States of America
For neither life nor nature cares if justice is ever done or not.
I don`t set the alarm to get up. I get up when I feel like it.
The conversation seemed just as boring and forgettable as details of American history around 1805, for example.
That wasn't a bad price for a first book. My agent upped it as much as possible. I was 27 and had nothing behind me. I was working like a fool to earn a living and pay for my apartment
If people have bought something of mine, they know by now that I will decline writing it for the movies
I was in New York. Hitchcock was in California. He rang me to make a report on his progress and said, I'm having trouble. I've just sacked my second screenwriter
one blow in anger [would] kill, probably, a child from aged two to eight. Those over eight would take two blows to kill.
I have no television - I hate it.
I don't want to know movie directors. I don't want to be close to them. I don't want to interfere with their work. I don't want them to interfere with mine.
I can't write if someone else is in the house, not even the cleaning woman.
He liked the fact that Venice had no cars. It made the city human. The streets were like veins, he thought, and the people were the blood, circulating everywhere.
I think J.D. Salinger is correct in granting no interviews, and in making no speeches
Honesty, for me, is usually the worst policy imaginable.
I find the public passion for justice quite boring and artificial.