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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.

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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 …

[...] I got up and walked over to Christopher, who was talking to the boy I had noticed. Christopher introduced us. The boy kissed me on both cheeks. His name was Theo. He had a long face and thick, dark, expressive eyebrows. He was wearing one of those navy workwear jumpsuits, like a mechanic, an…

He asked, “What’s the problem, Isa?” And tired of being coy all the time, I wanted to say, “I like when you are tender with me. I wish you were tender all the time.” It was the feeling that his tenderness was selective, and I wanted to be the object of all of it. I fiddled with my straw. The pulp o…