As some people turned to religion for comfort, so, Highsmith wrote in her notebook in September 1970, she took refuge in her belief that she was making progress as a writer. But she realised that both systems of survival were, however, fundamentally illusory. She wrote, she said, quoting Oscar Wilde because, 'Work never seems to me a reality, but a way of getting rid of reality'.
Andrew Wilson, Patricia Highsmith, Ζωή στο σκοτάδι
belief, comfort, illusion, illusory, progress, reality, refuge, religion, survival, systems, work, writer, writing