“Therese squeezed the wheel, then deliberately relaxed. She sensed a tremendous sorrow hanging over them, ahead of them, that was just beginning to reveal the edge of itself, that they were driving into. […] She had seen just now what she had only sensed before, that the whole world was ready to be their enemy, and suddenly what she and Carol had together seemed no longer love or anything happy but a monster between them, with each of them caught in a fist.”
— The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith (via jenniferslookingglass)
“I think sex flows more sluggishly in all of us than we care to believe… I think people often try to find through sex things that are much easier to find other ways.”
— Carol, Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt (via jeijeithegreat)
“He was sorry about the lack of detail, the lack of humor in the three write-ups. They might have said something about the old guy sitting on the toilet. Or the fellow signing the armistice with the back of his head bashed in. Those were strokes of genius. Why didn’t they appreciate them?”
— Patricia Highsmith, Woodrow Wilson’s Necktie
Patricia Highsmith by Dmitri Kasterine
“Her hands are enormous: square, powerful, and as large as her head. They are gnarled and nicked from her woodworking and her gardening. ‘Worker’s hands,’ says one friend. ‘Butcher’s hands, strangler’s hands,’ ventures a neighbor. Her thumbs are extraordinary: huge curved digits, bent out naturally at what appear to be unnatural angles to the rest of her fingers.” —Joan Schenkar, from The Talented Miss Highsmith: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith.
“I tell him his business, all business, is legalized throat-cutting, like marriage is legalized fornication. ― Patricia Highsmith, Strangers on a Train”
Patricia Highsmith © Martine Franck-Magnum Photos.
The portrait of Patricia in the back was painted by Allela Cornell, who PH had an affair with in the early 40s.
patricia highsmith
