“Faced with the prospect of a black depression, Highsmith once again retreated into fantasy, dreaming about an affair with the actress Anne Meacham, whose picture she had seen in a magazine publicising her role in the Tennessee Williams' play, In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel. After the disasters of recent years, she reckoned that the safest option was to escape into romantic imagination. She reviewed her failures over the past five years and concluded that 'the moral is: stay alone. Any idea of any close relationship should be imaginary, like any story I am writing. This way no harm is done to me or to any other person'.” WritingDreamRomanceBlackImaginationFictionFantasyRelationshipFailureDepressionRomanticSafetyAffairHarmDisasterStoryImaginaryRetreatDreamingWriteEscapeFailuresPictureActressDisastersMagazineSafestRetreated Book:Patricia Highsmith, ζωή στο σκοτάδι Source: Patricia Highsmith, ζωή στο σκοτάδι
“As the new year began, [Patricia Highsmith] felt completely paralysed, incapable of reading or picking up the phone. 'I can feel my grip loosening on my self,' she wrote. 'It is like strength failing in the hand that holds me above an abyss.' She wished there was a more awful-sounding word for what she was feeling than simply 'depression'. She wanted to die, she said, but then realised that the best course of action would be to endure the wretchedness until it passed. Her wish was, 'Not to die, but not to exist, simply, until this is over'.” SelfReadingFailingStrengthDepressionSuicideEndureDieIncapableAbyssParalysisExistWretchednessOverPassedGripParalysedLoosening Book:Patricia Highsmith, ζωή στο σκοτάδι Source: Patricia Highsmith, ζωή στο σκοτάδι