Top 200 Patricia Highsmith Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “And no book, and possibly no painting, when it is finished, is ever exactly like the first dream of it.”

— Patricia Highsmith

2. “My imagination functions much better when I don’t have to speak to people.”

— Patricia Highsmith

3. “What was it to love someone, what was love exactly, and why did it end or not end? Those were the real questions, and who could answer them?”

— Patricia Highsmith

4. “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.”

— Patricia Highsmith

5. “Everything human is alien to me.”

— Patricia Highsmith

6. “Honestly, I don’t understand why people get so worked up about a little murder!”

— Patricia Highsmith

7. “Obsessions are the only things that matter.”

— Patricia Highsmith

8. “Honesty, for me, is usually the worst policy imaginable.”

— Patricia Highsmith

9. “Perhaps it was freedom itself that choked her.”

— Patricia Highsmith

10. “Oh, in a different way now, because she was a different person, and it was like meeting Carol all over again, but it was still Carol and no one else. It would be Carol, in a thousand cities, a thousand houses, in foreign lands where they would go together, in heaven and in hell.”

— Patricia Highsmith

11. “Every man is his own law court and punishes himself enough.”

— Patricia Highsmith

12. “I have no television – I hate it.”

— Patricia Highsmith

13. “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.”

— Patricia Highsmith

14. “I can’t write if someone else is in the house, not even the cleaning woman.”

— Patricia Highsmith

15. “I find the public passion for justice quite boring and artificial.”

— Patricia Highsmith

16. “For neither life nor nature cares if justice is ever done or not.”

— Patricia Highsmith

17. “Each book is, in a sense, an argument with myself, and I would write it, whether it is ever published or not.”

— Patricia Highsmith

18. “Writing, of course, is a substitute for the life I cannot live, am unable to live.”

— Patricia Highsmith

19. “It is then good to remember that artists have existed and persisted, like the snail and coelacanth and other changing forms of organic life since long before governments were dreamed of.”

— Patricia Highsmith

20. “What a strange girl you are.” “Why?” “Flung out of space,” Carol said.”

— Patricia Highsmith

21. “January. It was all things. And it was one thing, like a solid door. Its cold sealed the city in a gray capsule. January was moments, and January was a year. January rained the moments down, and froze them in her memory:.”

— Patricia Highsmith

22. “Anticipation! It occurred to him that his anticipation was more pleasant to him than the experiencing.”

— Patricia Highsmith

23. “If you wanted to be cheerful, or melancholic, or wistful, or thoughtful, or courteous, you simply had to act those things with every gesture.”

— Patricia Highsmith

24. “This was the end of Dickie Greenleaf, he knew. He hated becoming Thomas Ripley again, hated being nobody, hated putting on his old set of habits again, and feeling that people looked down on him and were bored with him unless he put on an act for them like a clown, feeling incompetent and incapable of doing anything with himself except entertaining people for minutes at a time.”

— Patricia Highsmith

25. “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.”

— Patricia Highsmith

26. “I am the forever-seeking.”

— Patricia Highsmith

27. “I think friendships are the result of certain needs that can be completely hidden from both people, sometimes hidden forever.”

— Patricia Highsmith

28. “I think of a sun like Beethoven, a wind like Debussy, and birdcalls like Stravinsky. But the tempo is all mine.”

— Patricia Highsmith

29. “Writing is a way of organizing experience and life itself.”

— Patricia Highsmith

30. “Society’s law was lax compared to the law of conscience.”

— Patricia Highsmith

31. “One situation – maybe one alone – could drive me to murder: family life, togetherness.”

— Patricia Highsmith

32. “It always gets late with you. – Is that a compliment?”

— Patricia Highsmith

33. “The justice I have received, I shall give back.”

— Patricia Highsmith

34. “That’s exactly where you’re wrong! Any kind of person can murder. Purely circumstances and not a thing to do with temperament! People get so far – and it takes just the least little thing to push them over the brink. Anybody. Even your grandmother. I know.”

— Patricia Highsmith

35. “Perhaps identity, like hell, was merely other people.”

— Patricia Highsmith

36. “If the writer thinks about his material long enough, until it becomes a part of his mind and wakes up thinking about it- then at least when he starts to work, it will flow out as if by itself.”

— Patricia Highsmith

37. “Writing is a craft and needs constant practice.”

— Patricia Highsmith

38. “I’ve thought of a wonderful way to start a forest fire,′ Tom said musingly as they were having coffee.”

— Patricia Highsmith

39. “Carol raised her hand slowly and brushed her hair back, once on either side, and Therese smiled because the gesture was Carol, and it was Carol she loved and would always love. Oh, in a different way now, because she was a different person, and it was like meeting Carol all over again, but it was still Carol and no one else. It would be Carol, in a thousand cities, a thousand houses, in foreign lands where they would go together, in heaven and in hell.”

— Patricia Highsmith

40. “I feel I am in love with you, and it should be spring. I want the sun throbbing on my head like chords of music. I think of a sun like Beethoven, a wind like Debussy, and birdcalls like Stravinsky. But the tempo is all mine.”

— Patricia Highsmith

41. “You ask if I miss you. I think of your voice, your hands, and your eyes when you look straight into mine. I remember your courage that I hadn’t suspected, and it gives me courage.”

— Patricia Highsmith

42. “How was it possible to be afraid and in love... The two things did not go together. How was it possible to be afraid, when the two of them grew stronger together every day? And every night. Every night was different, and every morning. Together they possessed a miracle.”

— Patricia Highsmith

43. “Was it love or wasn’t it that she felt for Carol? And how absurd it was that she didn’t even know. She had heard about girls falling in love, and she knew what kind of people they were and what they looked like. Neither she nor Carol looked like that. Yet the way she felt about Carol passed all the tests for love and fitted all the descriptions.”

— Patricia Highsmith

44. “His stories were good because he imagined them intensely, so intensely that he came to believe them.”

— Patricia Highsmith

45. “Don’t you know I love you?’ Carol said.”

— Patricia Highsmith

46. “There’s no such thing as a perfect murder,” Tom said to Reeves. “That’s just a parlor game, trying to dream one up. Of course you could say there are a lot of unsolved murders. That’s different.”

— Patricia Highsmith

47. “January was a two-faced month, jangling like jester’s bells, crackling like snow crust, pure as any beginning, grim as an old man, mysteriously familiar yet unknown, like a word one can almost but not quite define.”

— Patricia Highsmith

48. “Happiness was a little like flying, she thought, like being a kite. It depended on how much one let the string out.”

— Patricia Highsmith

49. “They roared into the Lincoln Tunnel. A wild, inexplicable excitement mounted in Therese as she stared through the windshield. She wished the tunnel might cave in and kill them both, that their bodies might be dragged out together. She felt Carol glancing at her from time to time.”

— Patricia Highsmith

50. “I’m going to enjoy what I’ve got as long as it lasts.”

— Patricia Highsmith