Patricia Highsmith Quotes

I sleep as much as I want. I'll sleep, like, 11 hours, unless I'm working. Sometimes I do feel like, 'This is weird; I should just get up so I can fit into the world.' Then I'm like, 'Why?' I don't have a nine-to-five job.

I don't go to bed at 1 A.M. and wake up at 5 A.M. and say, 'Let's see if I can get this done today.'

I get up when I feel like getting up. That's the deal I've made with myself: I can stay in bed as long as my dog's bladder holds. The other half of that deal is that once the dog is walked, the very next thing I do is write. It's mechanical. It's programming, very nearly brainwashing.

In general, I usually don't really go by or live my life by a clock, and outside of touring, I don't really ask anyone else to. It's not out of lack of respect for anyone or intentional.

Left to my own devices I'd get up at midday every day of my life.

As far as I'm concerned, the entire reason for becoming a writer is not having to get up in the morning.

I work as often as I want and yet I'm free as a bird.

I'm set in my own ways. I like to do the things I want to do when I want to do them.

Most people can't handle a structureless life.

Liberty is the right to discipline ourselves in order not to be disciplined by others

In a strange way, I don't have a job, so I have a lot of time on my hands. When I do work, it might be very concentrated, and it might be months where you're not really doing anything except maybe playing the banjo or writing something. You know, there's a lot of time in the day if you're not working 9 to 5.

Insomnia never comes to a man who has to get up exactly at six o'clock. Insomnia troubles only those who can sleep any time.

I discovered on school days, when they've got to get up at 6:30, they won't get out of bed. But on the weekends, they were up at 6 a.m. I was like, "Why do you guys wake up so early on the weekends?" It's like, "Because I wake up and I think, Is it a TV day? And if it is..." So we had to change that rule. I'm like, "Thank you for telling me what I need to do."

You can do whatever you want to do as long as it is correct according to your conscience and heart.

Every morning between 9 and 12 I go to my room and sit before a piece of paper. Many times, I just sit for three hours with no ideas coming to me. But I know one thing. If an idea does come between 9 and 12 I am there ready for it.

I never could stand being forced to do something I didn't want to do at a time I didn't want to do it. Whenever I was able to do something I liked to do, though, when I wanted to do it, and the way I wanted to do it, I'd give it everything I had.

Routine is not a prison, but the way into freedom from time.

A man who cannot command himself will always be a slave.

Most people want to be able to go off and deal with their day - stop in here, run errands there - and when you can't do that, going out becomes a chore.

I build my life so that I don't wake up for anything. Ever. If you make me get up early to do something with you, I will hate you and resent you and figure out a way of never having to work with you ever again.

As far as your self-control goes, as far goes your freedom.

Liberty is obedience to the law which one has laid down for oneself

I cannot go and tell women what to wear and what not to wear; you have to decide on your own.

I don't like to have anybody tell me to be in a place at certain times. That's kind of the advantage of stand up. You're self-employed.

I do what I want. I try to be nice to everybody. When I fail, I try to apologize.