From a Washington Post story by Mikaella Clements headlined “For some authors, inspiration arrives in high definition. Others see nothing at all.”:

From a New York Times story by Dwight Garner headlined “Patricia Highsmith Lived Extravagantly, and Took Copious Notes:

Youth is wasted on the young, it’s said. It wasn’t wasted on Patricia Highsmith.

Born in Texas in 1921, she grew up, for the most part, in Manhattan. By the time she was a senior at Barnard College, she was so intelligent and fine-featured and obviously destined for greatness that both men and women threw themselves at her.

At Barnard and in Greenwich Village, where a bohemian crowd adopted her, Highsmith was aloof and desired….She was to these milieus what Donna Tartt must have been to Bennington.