“As some people turned to religion for comfort, so, Highsmith wrote in her notebook in September 1970, she took refuge in her belief that she was making progress as a writer. But she realised that b...”

“People who fell in love at first sight, rushed home to their parents to tell them the good news and subsequently married were, [Patricia Highsmith] thought, retarded. Rather, a more honest appraisa...”

“[Patricia Highsmith] was overwhelmed by sensory stimulation - there were too many people and too much noise and she just could not handle the supermarket. She continually jumped, afraid that someon...”

“After reading Burgum, [Patricia Highsmith] wrote in her cahier that, like Kafka, she felt she was a pessimist, unable to formulate a system in which an individual could believe in God, government o...”

“[Patricia Highsmith] was an extremely unbalanced person, extremely hostile and misanthropic and totally incapable of any kind of relationship, not just intimate ones. I felt sorry for her, because ...”

“[Patricia Highsmith] was a figure of contradictions: a lesbian who didn't particularly like women; a writer of the most insightful psychological novels who, at times, appeared bored by people; a mi...”

“Only in the agony of parting do we look into the depths of love.”

“My heart had melted into something akin to a sensation of happiness, peace of mind one might even say, at the realization that I had now reached the very bottom of agony.”

“To experience real agony is something hard to write about, impossible to understand while it grips you; you're frightened out of your wits, cant sit still, move, or even go decently insane.”

“To create art with all the passion in one's soul is to live art with all the beauty in one's heart.”

“art is risk made visible”

“Eleanor was right. She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn't supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.”

“The best incentive for an artist are the harshest criticism”

“I have no idea how to be an artist and a lover, so I chose the one most likely to make me happy when I'm eighty and gazing back on a long and productive life.”

“Artists strive to free this true and spontaneous self in their work. Creativity, meditation are ways of freeing an inner voice.”