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 Highsmith convinced that Blacks were responsible for the welfare crisis in America. She disliked Koreans because "they ate dogs". Highsmith was an active supporter of Palestinian rights, a stance which, according to "Carol" screenwriter Phyllis Nagy, "often teetered into outright antisemitism." When she was living in Switzerland in the 1980s, she used nearly 40 aliases when writing to various government bodies and newspapers deploring the state of Israel and the "influence" of the Jews. Nevertheless, many of the women she became romantically involved with as well as friends she valued were Jewish, such as Arthur Koestler, whom she met in October