Editing Patricia Highsmith (section)

=== Interests ===
Highsmith began keeping snails as pets in 1946 or 1949 as she was fascinated by their sexuality. Pet snails appear in her 1957 novel ''Deep Water,'' and her story "The Snail Watcher"  is about pet snails who kill their owner. She kept 300 snails at her home in Earl Soham and occasionally took some with her on social outings. She said that when she moved to France she smuggled her snails into the country in her bra. Schenkar, however, believes this is only an amusing story and that she smuggled her snails in cottage cheese cartons.<ref name="Schenkar2009" />{{Rp|pages=23, 251, 570}}

Her other hobbies included woodworking,<ref name="Schenkar2009" /> painting and gardening. Diogenes Verlag published a book of her drawings in 1995.<ref name="Wilson2003" />{{Rp|pages=46, 113–114, 375}}She was an accomplished gardener, but in her later years her friends and neighbors did most of the work on her gardens.<ref name="Wilson2003" />{{Rp|pages=286, 375, 437, 455}}