Patricia Highsmith Quotes

One constant writing ritual, no matter what I'm writing, is that I cannot write if people are around me. It wigs me out - the idea that someone is reading as I'm writing stuff.

When I write, I don't like to be around any humans.

I can't listen to music when I'm writing. I like music best in a car or on the train.

Writing is a very lonely occupation. To write you need to concentrate, to concentrate you need to lock yourself away. No distractions; you want your stream of thought uninterrupted.

I'm not one of those who can listen to music and write. I need the door closed. Windows shut. Facing the wall. No birds tweeting, views of nature, and so forth.

My writing time needs to surround itself with empty stretches, or at least unpeopled ones, for the writing takes place in an area of suspension as in a hanging nest that is almost entirely encapsulated.

My favourite place to write is at my desk in my house in the mountains of Crete. I produce more there because one big distraction is missing: the Internet.

When I'm writing I just think there's only the page and me and nobody else.

In my 30s, I wrote in the back house of a ramshackle Spanish Revival we rented across from the ocean in the Santa Monica Canyon. I wrote thousands of pages there, but in order to see another adult human being, I had to steal out through the brambly side of the house, along the driveway down to the street.

I'm on Twitter a lot of the day because I really like Twitter. It's great for jokes. But when I'm writing, I can't do anything else. I can't even listen to music. I just have to write, and then I can do something else. I can't multitask.

I'm noise-sensitive. It's always better for me if things are quiet, so I can concentrate.

Music inspires me and puts me in the right mood, but to actually listen to it when I write - I find it gets in the way.

I like semi-torn-down places where I could get nestled in and get something done without anyone bothering me.

A creation of importance can only be produced when its author isolates himself, it is a child of solitude.

I never listen to music when I write.

You can write any time people will leave you alone and not interrupt you. Or, rather, you can if you will be ruthless enough about it. But the best writing is certainly when you are in love.

I like to isolate myself when I work because I end up losing my voice by doing interviews all day.

When I'm writing, I'm in an isolation chamber. I'm not one to think about that outside world stuff when I'm writing.

Silence and solitude are more distracting to me than chatter and commotion.

I have a very beautiful room that in my house that we bought in Princeton. It's glass on three sides, and you'd think that's the perfect place to write. Somehow in that nice room I feel too exposed, and I can notice I'm too distracted by things going on, so I end up writing in a not-very-nice office bedroom.

I need to write in a small room - the smaller the better. I can't write in a big room where someone might sneak up behind my back.

I can't listen to anything when I write, not even the TV. I do have to listen to music when I drive, though.

I need quiet and solitude to work. Darkness is best. If I am wide awake, I can't write.

When I'm writing, I like to seal everything off and face the wall, not to look outside the window. The only way out is through the sentences.

It makes it harder to write if I watch a lot of television, because television is not like a written story.