A few years ago, there were requests to me, Can we make this? I said that I have no rights. Contact the Hitchcock estate, which won't release it for a remake.
Patricia Highsmith

For neither life nor nature cares if justice is ever done or not.
Patricia Highsmith

I can't write if someone else is in the house, not even the cleaning woman.
Patricia Highsmith

I didn't hang around films. I don't know if I'd ever seen Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes.
Patricia Highsmith

I don't set the alarm to get up. I get up when I feel like it.
Patricia Highsmith

I don't think Ripley is gay. He appreciates good looks in other men, that's true. But he's married in later books. I'm not saying he's very strong in the sex department. But he makes it in bed with his wife.
Patricia Highsmith

I don't want to know movie directors. I don't want to be close to them. I don't want to interfere with their work. I don't want them to interfere with mine.
Patricia Highsmith

I find the public passion for justice quite boring and artificial.
Patricia Highsmith

I hated cracking the whip, and these juries turn into political things.
Patricia Highsmith

I have Graham Greene's telephone number, but I wouldn't dream of using it. I don't seek out writers because we all want to be alone.
Patricia Highsmith


I have no television - I hate it.
Patricia Highsmith

I hope it will be set in California. In a way, I made a mistake, because a New Jersey policeman can't operate that way in New York. But in California, he can move between different counties.
Patricia Highsmith

I like to work for four or five hours a day. I aim for seven days a week.
Patricia Highsmith

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

I prefer to live in the country where it's quiet. Woody Allen movies there are dubbed into Italian.
Patricia Highsmith

I think J.D. Salinger is correct in granting no interviews, and in making no speeches.
Patricia Highsmith

I was in New York. Hitchcock was in California. He rang me to make a report on his progress and said, I'm having trouble. I've just sacked my second screenwriter.
Patricia Highsmith

If people have bought something of mine, they know by now that I will decline writing it for the movies.
Patricia Highsmith

My imagination functions much better when I don't have to speak to people.
Patricia Highsmith

Ripley is married. And he's not lost. He has his feet on the ground.
Patricia Highsmith