59 Quotes by Andrew Wilson

Janet Salter remembers that “if we were ever in a situation where we didn’t want people to know we were referring to ourselves, we would use biblical names – I would call myself Ruth, and Sylvia liked to use Esther,” the Jewish queen who saved her people from annihilation and the name she would give to the heroine of The Bell Jar.10.

Writing, she said was not only her favorite hobby, it was also a way in which she could escape into another world – the world of fantasy.

Why couldn’t she enjoy the present moment, she asked herself, without destroying it through overanalysis? What did she want? Everything.

The woman who defined herself through her writing had become an empty page.

Early in 1967 Highsmith’s agent told her why her books did not sell in paperback in America. It was, said Patricia Schartle Myrer, because they were ‘too subtle’, combined with the fact that none of her characters were likeable. ‘Perhaps it is because I don’t like anyone,’ Highsmith replied. ‘My last books may be about animals’.