The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith

• Something always turned up.
• Tom could not help feeling that Richard was not very intelligent, or else he loved to be photographed and thought he looked best with his mouth spread from ear to ear, which was not very intelligent of him, either.
• Did anybody human keep rubbing a thing like that in a child's face? Lots of aunts and even strangers raised a child for nothing and were delighted to do it.
• You were supposed to see the soul through the eyes, to see love through the eyes, the one place you could look at another human being and see what really went on inside.
• It was very much like the feeling on Christmas Eve in Paris, a feeling that everyone was watching him, as if he had an audience made up of the entire world, a feeling that kept him on his mettle, because to make a mistake would be catastrophic.
• But if he could only sit tight, nothing at all would happen.
• His anticipation was more pleasant to him than his experiencing.
• If you wanted to be cheerful, or melancholic, or wistful, or thoughtful, or courteous, you simply had to act those things with every gesture.
• I'm going to enjoy what I've got as long as it lasts.
• It was not wise to underestimate one's opponent.
• Did the world always mete out just deserts?

June 25, 2011