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
When I am thickening my plots, I like to think 'What if ... What if ... ' Thus my imagination can move from the likely, which everyone can think of, to the unlikely-but-possible, my preferred plot.
I think J.D. Salinger is correct in granting no interviews, and in making no speeches
I think people often try to find through sex things that are much easier to find in other ways.
The first person you should think of pleasing, in writing a book, is yourself. If you can amuse yourself for the length of time it takes to write a book, the publisher and the readers can and will come later.
I should love to do a novel... about one abnormal character seeing present-day life, very ordinary life, yet arresting through it, abnormality, until at the end the reader sees, and with little reluctance, that he is not abnormal at all, and that the main character might as well be himself.
Perhaps God and the Devil danced hand in hand around every single electron.
I think J.D. Salinger is correct in granting no interviews, and in making no speeches.
A few years ago, there were requests to me, Can we make this? I said that I have no rights. Contact the Hitchcock estate, which won't release it for a remake.
Ripley is married. And he's not lost. He has his feet on the ground.
I like to work for four or five hours a day. I aim for seven days a week.
Some fellow from the Third World kept hammering for prizes for a Communist film which was rotten.
I hated cracking the whip, and these juries turn into political things.
I don't think Ripley is gay. He appreciates good looks in other men, that's true. But he's married in later books. I'm not saying he's very strong in the sex department. But he makes it in bed with his wife.
I hope it will be set in California. In a way, I made a mistake, because a New Jersey policeman can't operate that way in New York. But in California, he can move between different counties.