I have a definite psychosis in being with people. I cannot bear it very long.

— Patricia Highsmith

I have been sadder than any man could be: for nothing in the world was made for me.

— Patricia Highsmith

I know you have it in you, Guy," Anne said suddenly at the end of a silence, "the capacity to be terribly happy.

— Patricia Highsmith

I like to drink when I travel. It enhances things, don’t you think?

— Patricia Highsmith

I only know it takes weeks to recover, as if one had been in a car accident.

— Patricia Highsmith

I read, write and create. I must lose myself in work, so that there is no space for the other/anything else.

— Patricia Highsmith

I tell him his business, all business, is legalized throat-cutting, like marriage is legalized fornication.

— Patricia Highsmith

... It had all happened in that instant she had seen Carol standing in the middle of the floor, watching her. Then the realization that so much had happened after that meeting made her feel incredibly lucky suddenly. It was so easy for a man and woman to find each other, to find someone who would do, but for her to have found Carol-

— Patricia Highsmith

It shook Therese in the profoundest part of her where no words were, no easy words like death or dying or killing Those words were somehow future, and this was present. An inarticulate anxiety, a desire to know, know anything for certain, had jammed itself in her throat for a moment she felt she could hardly breathe.

— Patricia Highsmith

It was the seventh or eighth floor, she couldn't remember which. A streetcar crawled past the front of the hotel, and people on the sidewalk moved in every direction, with legs on either side of them, and it crossed her mind to jump.

— Patricia Highsmith