2 Quotes & Sayings By Highsmith
Patricia Highsmith was born in Fort Worth, Texas on August 31, 1925. She studied for several years at the School of Fine Art at New York University and in 1951 graduated with a degree in painting. She began working in advertising and spent five years in Europe and Canada before returning to the United States in 1960 and settling in New York City. Her first novel, The Blunderer (1961), was published when she was twenty-seven; it was followed by Strangers on a Train (1951), The Talented Mr
Ripley (1955), and The Price of Salt (1952) -- all of which were national bestsellers. Her novel The Two Faces of January (1957) won the National Book Award. In 1955 she became a naturalized citizen of the United States and published her second novel, A Safe Place, under the name Patricia Highsmith.
When she was fifty-five, she divorced her husband, Peter van der Veeck, and married painter and illustrator Jean van der Veeck; they adopted the daughter of Peter van der Veeck from an earlier marriage.