Patricia Highsmith and her ashes were interred in its columbarium. She left her estate, worth an estimated $3 million, and the promise of any future royalties to the Yaddo colony, where she spent two months in 1948 writing the draft of "Strangers on a Train". Highsmith bequeathed her literary estate to the Swiss Literary Archives at the Swiss National Library in Bern, Switzerland. Her Swiss publisher, Diogenes Verlag, was appointed literary executor of the estate. Highsmith was a resolute atheist. Although she considered herself a liberal, and in her school years had gotten along with Black students, in later years she became
Patricia S. Cowings the only daughter of Sadie B. and Albert S. Cowings. Sadie was an assistant preschool teacher. Albert was a grocery store owner. She had three other brothers who went on to become a two-star army general, a jazz musician, and a freelance journalist. Her parents emphasized education as a "way of getting out of the Bronx." Patricia found her love for science at a young age. Psychology and later psychophysiology showed her how to enhance human potential. 'What better field is there than to study the animal who created all the other fields? Humans!' This love was further helped by