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8fc5b6c
|
Something always turned up. That was Tom's philosophy.
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Patricia Highsmith |
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0ec791a
|
Why should Dickie want to come back to subways and taxis and starched collars and a nine-to- five job? Or even a chauffeured car and vacations in Florida and Maine? It wasn't as much fun as sailing a boat in old clothes and being answerable to nobody for the way
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Patricia Highsmith |
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cbdda9b
|
He seems to be making you that way too - enough to tolerate people like him. And once you start tolerating them, you're going to end up being like them yourself.
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bad-people
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Patricia Highsmith |
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ae80c11
|
He felt he was about to experience again some ancient, delicious childhood moment that the steam calliope's sour hollowness, the stitching hurdy-gurdy accompaniment, and the drum-and-cymbal crash brought almost to the margin of his grasp.
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Patricia Highsmith |
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97d1987
|
What a strange girl you are." "Why?" "Flung out of space,"
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Patricia Highsmith |
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cfcc1af
|
Death was only one more adventure untried.
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Patricia Highsmith |
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5d3807f
|
Dusk was falling quickly. It was just after 7 P.M., and the month was October.
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Patricia Highsmith |
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67158c8
|
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: the woman she saw peering anxiously by the light of a match at the names in a dark doorway, the man who scribbled a message and handed it to his friend before they parted on the sidewalk, the man who ran a block for a bus a..
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Patricia Highsmith |
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c51aa32
|
I won't ever set the world on fire as a painter,' Dickie said, 'but I get a great deal of pleasure out of it.
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Patricia Highsmith |
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b1ee9c8
|
The taste of Scotch, though Guy didn't much care for it, was pleasant because it reminded him of Anne. She drank Scotch, when she drank. It was like her, golden, full of light, made with careful art.
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golden
light
scotch
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Patricia Highsmith |
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f778c21
|
La ninas nacen mujeres -dijo Margot, la madre de Thea-. Los ninos no nacen hombres. Tienen que aprender a serlo. Pero las ninas ya tienen un caracter de mujer.
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Patricia Highsmith |
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20a429c
|
Kick me out, she thought. What was in or out? How did one kick out an emotion?
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Patricia Highsmith |
|
54e7056
|
Finally, Carol said in a tone of hopelessness, "Darling, can I ask you to forgive me?" The tone hurt Therese more than the question. "I love you, Carol." "But do you see what it means?"
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relationships
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Patricia Highsmith |
|
7d189dd
|
Don't you want to forget it, if it's past?" "I don't know. I don't know just how you mean that." "I mean, are you sorry?" "No. Would I do the same thing again? Yes." "Do you mean with somebody else, or with her?" "With her," Therese said."
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Patricia Highsmith |
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dfc44c4
|
He remembered deciding then that the world was full of Simon Legrees, and that you had to be an animal, as tough as the gorillas who worked with him at the warehouse, or starve.
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Patricia Highsmith |
|
908f747
|
Odd, Tom thought, that some girls meant sadness and death. Some girls looked like sunlight, creativity, joy, but they really meant death, and not even because the girls were enticing their victims, in fact one might blame the boys for being deceived by--nothing at all, simply imagination.
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Patricia Highsmith |
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cd2aa08
|
She envied him. She envied him his faith that there would always be a place, a home, a job, someone else for him. She envied him that attitude. She almost resented his having it.
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Patricia Highsmith |
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45529ae
|
I tell him his business, all business, is legalized throat-cutting, like marriage is legalized fornication.
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|
fornication
marriage
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Patricia Highsmith |
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aa3793f
|
He could feel the belligerence growing in Freddie Miles as surely as if his huge body were generating a heat that he could feel across the room.
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|
|
Patricia Highsmith |
|
cc0a0c7
|
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:
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Patricia Highsmith |
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86af453
|
Once a person has become detached from his possessions, his customary duties, his moments of solitude, where is he? What is he?
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|
duties
possessions
solitude
|
Patricia Highsmith |
|
9b9f62a
|
I'm not melancholic,' she protested, but the thin ice was under her feet again, the uncertainties. or was it that she always wanted a little more than she had, no matter how much she had?
|
|
patricia-highsmith
the-price-of-salt
unsatisfied
|
Patricia Highsmith |
|
cb4f18e
|
Yes," Therese said. "What a strange girl you are." "Why?" "Flung out of space," Carol said."
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|
|
Patricia Highsmith |
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fc82966
|
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.
|
|
carol-aird
gay
lesbian
lgbt
love
therese
therese-belivet
|
Patricia Highsmith |
|
25b77d8
|
There was something demoniacal and insuperable about typographical errors, as if they were part of the natural evil that permeated man's existence, as if they had a life of their own and were determined to manifest themselves no matter what, as surely as weeds in the best-tended gardens.
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|
|
Patricia Highsmith |
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fd5700a
|
She knew what bothered her at the store. It was the sort of thing she wouldn't try to tell Richard. It was that the store intensified things that had always bothered her, as long as she could remember. It was the waste 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 money bags, coat checkings, and time clocks that kept people even from..
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|
|
Patricia Highsmith |
|
c55b215
|
Outside, under the marquee of the hotel, he stood a moment as he did each night beneath the marquee of the Hotel Hyperion, while he decided what direction to take, what to do. And suddenly, realizing it was not the Hotel Hyperion, that the circumstances were quite different, he felt loneliness spring up like a dark forest all around him. The odd thing was, he felt no impulse to hurry after her, to find her somehow. What would he have to off..
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|
dark
decline
direction
fall
forest
history
hurry
impulse
inadequacy
loneliness
love
offer
weakness
|
Patricia Highsmith |
|
dcd3926
|
In the middle of the block, she opened the door of a coffee shop, but they were playing one of the songs she had heard with Carol everywhere, and she let the door close and walked on. The music lived, but the world was dead. And the song would die one day, she thought, but how would the world come back to life? How would its salt come back?
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Patricia Highsmith |
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bc27c28
|
Life is a long failure of understanding, a long, mistaken shutting of the heart.
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|
heart
life
mistaken
shutting
understanding
|
Patricia Highsmith |
|
9a248cb
|
But love and hate, he thought now, good and evil, lived side by side in the human heart, and not merely in differing proportions in one man and the next, but all good and all evil. One had merely to look for a little of either to find it all, one had merely to scratch the surface. All things had opposites close by, every decision a reason against it, every animal an animal that destroys it, the male the female, the positive the negative.
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|
|
Patricia Highsmith |
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61a953b
|
The flowers you gave me--they died.
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|
Patricia Highsmith |
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7d895a7
|
Society's law was lax compared to the law of conscience
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|
|
Patricia Highsmith |
|
91e831b
|
She had the kind of face that must be seen in action to be attractive.
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|
|
Patricia Highsmith |
|
26d0d2e
|
How about some perfume?" Carol asked, moving toward her with the bottle. She touched Therese's forehead with her fingers, at the hairline where she had kissed her that day. "You remind me of the woman I once saw," Therese said, "somewhere off Lexington. Not you but the light. She was combing her hair up." Therese stopped, but Carol waited for her to go on. Carol always waited, and she could never say exactly what she wanted to say. "Early o..
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|
|
Patricia Highsmith |
|
e169160
|
She's everything that should be loathed," he went on, staring in front of him. "Sometimes I think I hate everything in the world. No decency, no conscience. She's what people mean when they say America never grows up, America rewards the corrupt. She's the type who goes to the bad movies, acts in them, reads the love-story magazines, lives in a bungalow, and whips her husband into earning more money this year so they can buy on the installm..
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Patricia Highsmith |
|
ceb069a
|
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.
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|
female-authors
murder
mystery
thriller
|
Patricia Highsmith |
|
7005daf
|
She probably had all the time in the world, Therese thought, probably did nothing all day but what she felt like doing.
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|
idle
leisure
patricia-highsmith
the-price-of-salt
|
Patricia Highsmith |
|
9b02e10
|
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 |
|
a7622d1
|
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 even from serving the store as efficiently as they might - the sense that everyone was incommunicado with everyone else and living on an entirely wrong plane, so that the meaning, the message, the love, or w..
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|
|
Patricia Highsmith |
|
11e22ec
|
That night, talking over the road map about their route tomorrow, talking as matter-of-factly as a couple of strangers, Therese thought surely tonight would not be like last night. But when they kissed good night in bed, Therese felt their sudden release, that leap of response in both of them, as if their bodies were of some materials, which put together inevitably created desire.
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|
|
Patricia Highsmith |
|
665742e
|
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 |
|
60a84ee
|
How was it possible to be afraid and in love, Therese thought. 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.
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|
|
Patricia Highsmith |
|
35125d7
|
Just what did happen to a corpse under water for four, five years, even three? the tarpaulin or canvas would rot, perhaps more than half of it would disappear; the stones would likely have fallen out, therefore, enabling the corpse to drift more easily, even rise a little, provided any flesh was left. But wasn't rising due to bloating? Tom thought of the word maceration, the flaking off in layers of the outer skin. Then what? The nibbling o..
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|
|
Patricia Highsmith |
|
c647ba8
|
The law was not society, it began. Society was people like himself and Owen and Brillhart, who hadn't the right to take the life of another member of society. And yet the law did. "And yet the law is supposed to be the will of society at least. It isn't even that. Or maybe it is collectively," he added, aware that as always he was doubling back before he come to a point, making things as complex as possible in trying to make them certain."
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|
society
|
Patricia Highsmith |