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940465b
|
She tried to keep her voice steady, but it was pretense, like pretending self-control when something you loved was dead in front of your eyes. They would have to separate here.
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Patricia Highsmith |
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e5e7b8e
|
Happiness was like a green vine spreading through her, stretching fine tendrils, bearing flowers through her flesh. She had a vision of a pale-white flower, shimmering as if seen in darkness, or through water. Why did people talk of heaven, she wondered.
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Patricia Highsmith |
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13f965f
|
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-
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lesbian
lgbt
love
lucky
patricia-highsmith
romantic
the-price-of-salt
|
Patricia Highsmith |
|
58dd7ba
|
What a strange girl you are." "Why?" "Flung out of space," Carol said."
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Patricia Highsmith |
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acd7e55
|
I got a theory a person ought to do everything it's possible to do before he dies, and maybe die trying to do something that's really impossible.
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Patricia Highsmith |
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525e38f
|
A kiss, for instance, is not to be minimized, or its value judged by anyone else. I wonder do these men grade their pleasure in terms of whether their actions produce a child or not, and do they consider them more pleasant if they do. It is a question of pleasure after all, and what's the use of debating the pleasure of an ice cream cone versus a football game -- or a Beethoven quartet versus the Mona Lisa. I'll leave that to the philosophe..
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Patricia Highsmith |
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52dd6e1
|
A rush of panic comforted him with its familiarity.
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Patricia Highsmith |
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108111e
|
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.
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Patricia Highsmith |
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171138f
|
I'd had a little feeling of destiny. Because, you see, what I mean about affinities is true from friendships down to even the accidental glance at someone on the street-there's always a definite reason somewhere. I think even the poets would agree with me.
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|
fate
friendship
patricia-highsmith
poets
red-string-of-fate
relationships
the-price-of-salt
|
Patricia Highsmith |
|
3a65f8a
|
But Carol had not betrayed her. Carol loved her more than she loved her child. That was part of the reason why she had not promised. She was gambling now as she had gambled on getting everything from the detective that day on the road, and she lost then, too. And now she saw Carol's face changing, saw the little signs of astonishment and shock so subtle that perhaps only she in the world could have noticed them, and Therese could not think ..
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Patricia Highsmith |
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348e3ac
|
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.
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|
crazy
die-together
patricia-highsmith
romantic
the-price-of-salt
to-die-by-your-side
wild
|
Patricia Highsmith |
|
fef4f34
|
She knew what bothered her at the store...It was that the store intensified things that had always bothered her, as long as she could remember. It was the pointless actions, the meaningless chores that seemed to keep her from doing what she wanted to do, might have done-and here it was the complicated procedures with moneybags, coat checkings, and time clocks that kept people from even serving the store as efficiently as they might-the sens..
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|
mindless
monotony
patricia-highsmith
retail
the-price-of-salt
work
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Patricia Highsmith |
|
0d08d90
|
He remembered that right after that, he had stolen a loaf of bread from a delicatessen counter and had taken it home and devoured it, feeling that the world owed a loaf of bread to him, and more.
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Patricia Highsmith |
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1f0512d
|
Even the pearl at her earlobe looked alive, like a drop of water that a touch might destroy.
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Patricia Highsmith |
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97dee9f
|
Therese was propped up on one elbow. The milk was so hot, she could barely let her lip touch it at first. The tiny sips spread inside her mouth and released a melange of organic flavors. The milk seemed to taste of bone and blood, of warm flesh, or hair, saltless as chalk yet alive as a growing embryo. It was hot through and through to the bottom of the cup, and Therese drank it down, as people in fairy tales drink the potion that will tran..
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Patricia Highsmith |
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26d90bb
|
I think of a sun like Beethoven, a wind like Debussy, and birdcalls like Stravinsky. But the tempo is all mine.
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Patricia Highsmith |
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0351569
|
Hay algo mas aburrido que la historia del pasado? -dijo Therese sonriendo. -Quiza un futuro sin historia.
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Patricia Highsmith |
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41300d9
|
She was conscious of the moments passing like irrevocable time, irrevocable happiness, for in these last seconds she might turn and see the face she would never see again.
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Patricia Highsmith |
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8f00255
|
Who am I, anyway? Does one exist, or to what extent does one exist as an individual without friends, family, anybody to whom one can relate, to whom one's existence is of the least importance?
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Patricia Highsmith |
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1554763
|
What else mattered except being with Carol, anywhere, anyhow?
|
|
love
patricia-highsmith
romantic
the-price-of-salt
|
Patricia Highsmith |
|
cc83299
|
I think there's a definite reason for every friendship just as there's a reason why certain atoms unite and others don't--certain missing factors in one, or certain present factors in the other
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Patricia Highsmith |
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ffbe063
|
Mr Greenleaf was such a decent fellow himself, he took it for granted that everybody else in the world was decent, too. Tom had almost forgotten such people existed.
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Patricia Highsmith |
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8aca6cb
|
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.
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Patricia Highsmith |
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4207d74
|
Our actions and responsibilities are our own; what later returns to either haunt or applaud us is neither possible to predict nor always completely understandable.
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Patricia Highsmith |
|
b79116b
|
People, feelings, everything! Double! Two people in each person. There's also a person exactly the opposite of you, like the unseen part of you, somewhere in the world, and he waits in ambush.
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Patricia Highsmith |
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5e4508c
|
It was easy, after all, simply to open the door and escape. It was easy, she thought, because she was not really escaping at all.
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|
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Patricia Highsmith |
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1983d9f
|
Nothing was true but the fatigue of life and the eternal disappointment.
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|
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Patricia Highsmith |
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d55c4ad
|
Carol looked at her. "How do you become a poet?" "By feeling things - too much, I suppose," Therese answered conscientiously."
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|
feeling-too-much
poet
|
Patricia Highsmith |
|
f9dfeb2
|
Forever, Tom thought. Maybe he'd never go back to the States. It was not so much Europe itself as the evenings he had spent alone, here and in Rome, that made him feel that way. Evenings by himself simply looking at maps, or lying around on sofas thumbing through guidebooks. Evenings looking at his clothes - his clothes and Dickie's - and feeling Dickie's rings between his palms, and running his fingers over the antelope suitcase he had bou..
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Patricia Highsmith |
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43ca878
|
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 ..
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Patricia Highsmith |
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13b1266
|
Thinking no more about it, he stepped off into that cool space, that fast descent to her, with nothing in his mind but a memory of a curve of her shoulder, naked, as he had never seen it.
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|
this-sweet-sickness
|
Patricia Highsmith |
|
6b39dd6
|
But even that question wasn't definite enough. Perhaps it was a statement after all: I don't want to die yet without knowing you.
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Patricia Highsmith |
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e87cf51
|
I'm going to enjoy what I've got as long as it lasts.
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Patricia Highsmith |
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8b91767
|
And she did not have to ask if this were right, no one had to tell her, because this could not have been more right or perfect.
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Patricia Highsmith |
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bc5ab80
|
Don't you know I love you?' Carol said.
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|
Patricia Highsmith |
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fc98b2d
|
Tom envied him with a heartbreaking surge of envy and self-pity.
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|
Patricia Highsmith |
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888cd67
|
A musica vivia, mas o mundo estava morto. E a cancao morreria um dia, pensou, mas como voltaria o mundo a vida? Como voltaria o seu sal?
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Patricia Highsmith |
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a48c3ec
|
Love was supposed to be a kind of blissful insanity.
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|
|
Patricia Highsmith |
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63b1ac1
|
Once the back of their hands brushed on the table, and Therese's skin there felt seperately alive and rather burning. There could not understand it, but it was so. Therese glanced at her face that was somewhat turned away, and again she knew that instant of half-recognition. And knew, too, that it was not to be believed. She had never seen the woman before. If she had, could she had forgotten?
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Patricia Highsmith |
|
3a7f9c1
|
She hated cleaning up after making something.
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|
cleaning-up
patricia-highsmith
the-price-of-salt
|
Patricia Highsmith |
|
011aba6
|
She envied him. She envied him his faith there would always be a place, a home, a job, someone else for him. She envied him that attitude.
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|
|
Patricia Highsmith |
|
81811a3
|
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.
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Patricia Highsmith |
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a43f9be
|
I like to drink when I travel. It enhances things, don't you think?
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|
travel
|
Patricia Highsmith |
|
c48f4c2
|
There were many times when logic was of no comfort.
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|
|
Patricia Highsmith |