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FEBRUARY 17, 1941

I should be more creative, more original at this age. I tremble to think that I am 20 years old. Nothing! Except for confused emotions. I’m not even in love! I have to finish the ideas I’ve already had. Then the others will come like a rushing river.

replied my stepfather with didactic peremptoriness

1/6/41

One brazen, conceited, decadent, despicable, retrogressive thought for today: I lost myself in a groundless dream, of life in suspension, and third dimension, of my friends and their types—of persons and faces, nameless, only filling spaces—and each one was quite to be expected, where he …

THIS COLLECTION OPENS in 1941, when Patricia Highsmith introduces the first of her diaries—Diary 1a—to be kept in tandem with her notebooks. On April 14, 1941, she writes, “Je suis fait[e] de deux appétits: l’amour et la pensée [My appetite is twofold: I hunger for love and for thought].” How much …