Truman Capote famous quotes

I love New York, even though it isn't mine, the way something has to be, a tree or a street or a house, something, anyway, that belongs to me because I belong to it.
-- Truman Capote

#New York #Tree #House

Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.
-- Truman Capote

#Inspirational #Success #Perseverance

Past certain ages or certain wisdoms it is very difficult to look with wonder; it is best done when one is a child; after that, and if you are lucky, you will find a bridge of childhood and walk across it.
-- Truman Capote

#Children #Past #Bridges

You call yourself a free spirit, a "wild thing," and you're terrified somebody's gonna stick you in a cage. Well baby, you're already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it's not bounded in the west by Tulip, Texas, or in the east by Somali-land. It's wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself.
-- Truman Capote

#Running #Baby #Texas

I don't care what anybody says about me as long as it isn't true.
-- Truman Capote

#Careers #Gossip #Long

Some cities, like wrapped boxes under Christmas trees, conceal unexpected gifts, secret delights. Some cities will always remain wrapped boxes, containers of riddles never to be solved, nor even to be seen by vacationing visitors, or, for that matter, the most inquisitive, persistent travelers.
-- Truman Capote

#Cities #Tree #Secret

To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the inner music that words make.
-- Truman Capote

#Music #Writing #Creativity

The brain may take advice, but not the heart, and love having no geography, knows no boundaries: weight and sink it deep, no matter, it will rise and find the surface: and why not? Any love is natural and beautiful that lies within a person's nature; only hypocrites would hold a man responsible for what he loves, emotional illiterates and those of righteous envy, who, in their agitated concern, mistake so frequently the arrow pointing to heaven for the one that leads to hell.
-- Truman Capote

#Love #Beautiful #Dream

A conversation is a dialogue, not a monologue. That's why there are so few good conversations: due to scarcity, two intelligent talkers seldom meet.
-- Truman Capote

#Communication #Intelligent #Talking

Anyone who ever gave you confidence, you owe them a lot.
-- Truman Capote

#Confidence

Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.
-- Truman Capote

#Music #Writing #Light

Oh, I adore to cook. It makes me feel so mindless in a worthwhile way.
-- Truman Capote

#Cooking #Way #Culinary

Writing stopped being fun when I discovered the difference between good writing and bad and, even more terrifying, the difference between it and true art. And after that, the whip came down.
-- Truman Capote

#Art #Fun #Writing

Good luck and believe me, dearest Doc - it's better to look at the sky than live there. Such an empty place; so vague. Just a country where the thunder goes and things disappear.
-- Truman Capote

#Country #Believe #Good Luck

She was a triumph over ugliness, so often more beguiling than real beauty, if only because it contains paradox. In this case, as opposed to the scrupulous method of good taste and scientific grooming, the trick had been worked by exaggerating defects; she'd made them ornamental by admitting them boldly.
-- Truman Capote

#Real #Taste #Triumph

New York is the only real city-city.
-- Truman Capote

#New York #Real #Cities

A man who doesn't dream is like a man who doesn't sweat. He stores up a lot of poison.
-- Truman Capote

#Dream #Men #Sweat

The wind is us-- it gathers and remembers all our voices, then sends them talking and telling through the leaves and the fields.
-- Truman Capote

#Voice #Talking #Wind

You can't blame a writer for what the characters say.
-- Truman Capote

#Character #Writing #Fearless

Nancy clutter is always in a hurry, but she always has time. And that is the definition of a lady.
-- Truman Capote

#Definitions #Nancy #Clutter

Sometimes when I think how good my book can be, I can hardly breathe.
-- Truman Capote

#Reading #Book #Thinking

But it's Sunday, Mr. Bell. Clocks are slow on Sundays.
-- Truman Capote

#Sunday #Bells #Clock

There’s got to be something wrong with us. To do what we did.
-- Truman Capote

we don't belong to each other: he's an independent, and so am I.
-- Truman Capote

#Independent

I don't want to own anything until I find a place where me and things go together.
-- Truman Capote

#Inspirational #Motivational #Entrepreneur

Are the dead as lonesome as the living?
-- Truman Capote

#Lonesome

And in this moment, like a swift intake of breath, the rain came.
-- Truman Capote

#Rain #Moments

In my garden, after a rainfall, you can faintly, yes, hear the breaking of new blooms.
-- Truman Capote

#Nature #Garden #Rainfall

It’s better to look at the sky than live there
-- Truman Capote

#Inspirational #Motivational #Sky

I am a completely horizontal author. I can't think unless I'm lying down, either in bed or stretched on a couch.
-- Truman Capote

#Lying #Writing #Thinking

The brain may take advice, but not the heart, and love, having no geography, knows no boundaries: weight and sink it deep, no matter, it will rise and find the surface.
-- Truman Capote

#Heart #Advice #Brain

A work of art is one of mystery, the one extreme magic; everything else is either arithmetic or biology.
-- Truman Capote

#Art #Design #Magic

When seriously explored, the short story seems to me the most difficult and disciplining form of prose writing extant. Whatever control and technique I may have I owe entirely to my training in this medium.
-- Truman Capote

#Writing #Insightful #Training

Most of life is so dull it is not worth discussing, and it is dull at all ages. When we change our brand of cigarette, move to a new neighborhood, subscribe to a different newspaper, fall in and out of love, we are protesting in ways both frivolous and deep against the not to be diluted dullness of day-to-day living.
-- Truman Capote

#Love #Moving #Fall

Before birth; yes, what time was it then? A time like now, and when they were dead, it would be still like now: these trees, that sky, this earth, those acorn seeds, sun and wind, all the same, while they, with dust-turned hearts, change only.
-- Truman Capote

#Inspirational #Heart #Dust

He loved her, he loved her, and until he'd loved her she had never minded being alone....
-- Truman Capote

#Love

I’ve tried that. I’ve tried aspirin, too. Rusty thinks I should smoke marijuana, and I did for a while, but it only makes me giggle. What I’ve found does the most good is just to get into a taxi and go to Tiffany’s. It calms me down right away, the quietness and the proud look of it; nothing very bad could happen to you there, not with those kind men in their nice suits, and that lovely smell of silver and alligator wallets. If I could find a real-life place that made me feel like Tiffany’s, then I’d buy some furniture and give the cat a name.
-- Truman Capote

#Real #Nice #Cat

Still, when all is said, somewhere one must belong: even the soaring falcon returns to its master's wrist.
-- Truman Capote

#Return #Wrists #Masters

Have you never heard what the wise man say : all of the future exists in the past.
-- Truman Capote

#Inspirational #Wise #Past

Imagination, of course, can open any door - turn the key and let terror walk right in.
-- Truman Capote

#Inspirational #Doors #Keys

It is the want to know the end that makes us believe in God, or witchcraft, believe, at least, in something
-- Truman Capote

#Believe #Want #Ends

I prefer to underwrite. Simple, clear as a country creek.
-- Truman Capote

#Country #Simple #Creeks

Mick Jagger is about as sexy as a pissing toad.
-- Truman Capote

#Sexy #Toads #Jagger

Did you ever, in that wonderland wilderness of adolesence [sic] ever, quite unexpectedly, see something, a dusk sky, a wild bird, a landscape, so exquisite terror touched you at the bone? And you are afraid, terribly afraid the smallest movement, a leaf, say, turning in the wind, will shatter all? That is, I think, the way love is, or should be: one lives in beautiful terror.
-- Truman Capote

#Beautiful #Love Is #Thinking

Never love a wild thing, Mr. Bell,’ Holly advised him. ‘That was Doc’s mistake. He was always lugging home wild things. A hawk with a hurt wing. One time it was a full-grown bobcat with a broken leg. But you can’t give your heart to a wild thing; the more you do, the stronger they get. Until they’re strong enough to run into the woods. Or fly into a tree. Then a taller tree. Then the sky. That’s how you’ll end up Mr. Bell. If you let yourself love a wild thing. You’ll end up looking at the sky.
-- Truman Capote

#Running #Strong #Hurt

Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the back yard and shot it.
-- Truman Capote

#Children #Book #Writing

When God hands you a gift, he also hands you a whip; and the whip is intended for self-flagellation solely.
-- Truman Capote

#Self #Hands

Fame is only good for one thing - they will cash your check in a small town.
-- Truman Capote

#Cash #Towns #Fame

I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil.
-- Truman Capote

#Believe #Writing #Crafts

I can see every monster as they come in.
-- Truman Capote

#Monsters

Venice is like eating an entire box of chocolate liqueurs in one go.
-- Truman Capote

#Travel #Food #Venice

But we are alone, darling child, terribly, isolated each from the other; so fierce is the world's ridicule we cannot speak or show our tenderness; for us, death is stronger than life, it pulls like a wind through the dark, all our cries burlesqued in joyless laughter; and with the garbage of loneliness stuffed down us until our guts burst bleeding green, we go screaming round the world, dying in our rented rooms, nightmare hotels, eternal homes of the transient heart.
-- Truman Capote

#Children #Laughter #Loneliness

Everybody has to feel superior to somebody," she said. "But it's customary to present a little proof before you take the privilege.
-- Truman Capote

#Privilege #Littles #Said

I like to talk on TV about those things that aren't worth writing about.
-- Truman Capote

#Writing #Tvs

That isn't writing at all, it's typing.
-- Truman Capote

#Writing #Typing

Love is a chain of love as nature is a chain of life.
-- Truman Capote

#Love #Life #Friendship

Friendship is a pretty full-time occupation if you really are friendly with somebody. You can't have too many friends because then you're just not really friends.
-- Truman Capote

#Best Friend #Friendship #Funny Friend

That's not writing, that's typing
-- Truman Capote

#Writing #Comeback #Typing

Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act.
-- Truman Capote

#Life #Humorous #Play

There were hints of sunrise on the rim of the sky, yet it was still dark, and the traces of morning color were like goldfish swimming in ink.
-- Truman Capote

#Morning #Dark #Swimming

I'll never get used to anything. Anybody that does they might as well be dead.
-- Truman Capote

#Might #Doe #Used

Well, I'm about as tall as a shotgun, and just as noisy.
-- Truman Capote

#Shotguns #Wells

I am always drawn back to places where I have lived, the houses and their neighborhoods.
-- Truman Capote

#House #Neighborhood

The good thing about masturbation is that you don't have to get dressed up for it.
-- Truman Capote

#Witty #Sex #Good Things

Just remember: If one bird carried every grain of sand, grain by grain, across the ocean, by the time he got them all on the other side, that would only be the beginning of eternity.
-- Truman Capote

#Ocean #Bird #Sides

I haven't anything against *****s, except this: some of them may have an honest tongue but they all have dishonest hearts.
-- Truman Capote

#Heart #Tongue #May

It's bad enough in life to do without something YOU want; but confound it, what gets my goat is not being able to give somebody something you want THEM to have.
-- Truman Capote

#Life #Giving #Want

Maybe the older you grow and the less easy it is to put thought into action, maybe that’s why it gets all locked up in your head and becomes a burden.
-- Truman Capote

#Inspirational #Action #Easy

Time. Time. What is time? Swiss manufacture it, French hoard it, Italians squander it, Americans say it is money. Hindus say it does not exist. Know what I say? I say time is a crook.
-- Truman Capote

#Inspirational #Time #Crooks

My yardstick is how somebody treats me.
-- Truman Capote

#Yardsticks #Treats

I've tried to believe, but I don't, I can't, and there's no use pretending.
-- Truman Capote

#Believe #Use #Pretending

As long as you live, there's always something waiting; and even if it's bad, and you know it's bad, what can you do? You can't stop living.
-- Truman Capote

#Inspirational #Long #Waiting

I suppose you think I'm very brazen. Or très fou. Or something.' Not at all.' She seemed disappointed. 'Yes, you do. Everybody does. I don't mind. It's useful.
-- Truman Capote

#Thinking #Mind #Doe

The instant she saw the letter she squinted her eyes and bent her lips in a tough tiny smile that advanced her age immeasurably. "Darling," she instructed me, "would you reach in the drawer there and give me my purse. A girl doesn't read this sort of thing without her lipstick.
-- Truman Capote

#Girl #Eye #Giving

I couldn't understand a sense of unease that multiplied until I could hear my heart beating.
-- Truman Capote

#Heart #My Heart #Heart Beating

The enemy was anyone who was someone he wanted to be or who had anything he wanted to have.
-- Truman Capote

#Enemy #Wanted

You're wonderful. Unique. I love you.
-- Truman Capote

#Love You #Unique #Wonderful

Don't wanna sleep, don't wanna die, just wanna go a-travellin' through the pastures of the sky
-- Truman Capote

#Sleep #Sky #Pastures

Home is where you feel at home. I'm still looking.
-- Truman Capote

#Home #Feels #Stills

To wake up one morning and feel that I was a last a grown-up person, emptied of resentment, vengeful thoughts and other wasteful childish emotions. To find myself, in other words, an adult. Truman Capote
-- Truman Capote

#Morning #Wake Up #Lasts

You don't understand. You've never hated anybody. No, I never have. We're allotted just so much time on earth, and I wouldn't want the Lord to see me wasting mine in any such manner.
-- Truman Capote

#Earth #Want #Lord

I don't think I've ever drunk champagne before breakfast before. With breakfast on several occasions, but never before before.
-- Truman Capote

#Drinking #Thinking #Drunk

...of all things this was the saddest, that life goes on: if one leaves one's lover, life should stop for him, and if one disappears from the world, then the world should stop, too: and it never did. And that was the real reason for most people getting up in the morning: not because it would matter but because it wouldn't.
-- Truman Capote

#Morning #Real #People

And yes, to answer you seriously, I am beginning to be... well, not bored, but tempted; afraid, but tempted. When you've been in pain for a long time, when you wake up every morning with a rising sense of hysteria, then boredom is what you want, marathon sleeps, a silence in yourself.
-- Truman Capote

#Morning #Pain #Sleep

Randolph," he said, "were you ever as young as me?" And Randolph said: "I was never so old.
-- Truman Capote

#Said #Young

There's something really the matter with most people who wear tattoos. There's at least some terrible story. I know from experience that there's always something terribly flawed about people who are tattooed, above some little something that Johnny had done in the Navy, even though that's a bad sign...It's terrible. Psychologically it's crazy. Most people who are tattooed, it's the sign of some feeling of inferiority, they're trying to establish some macho identification for themselves.
-- Truman Capote

#Tattoo #Crazy #People

It's a very excruciating life facing that blank piece of paper every day and having to reach up somewhere into the clouds and bring something down out of them.
-- Truman Capote

#Writing #Clouds #Pieces

But, my dear, so few things are fulfilled: what are most lives but a series of incompleted episodes? 'We work in the dark, we do what we can, we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task...' It is wanting to know the end that makes us believe in God, or witchcraft, believe, at least, in something.
-- Truman Capote

#Believe #Passion #Dark

They can romanticize us so, mirrors, and that is their secret: what a subtle torture it would be to destroy all the mirrors in the world: where then could we look for reassurance of our identities?
-- Truman Capote

#Mirrors #Secret #Identity

The feeble-minded, the neurotic, the criminal, perhaps, also, the artist, have unpredictability and perverted innocence in common.
-- Truman Capote

#Artist #Criminals #Common

Anyone who ever gave you confidence, you owe them a lot". ~Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany's, 1958, spoken by the character Holly Golightly
-- Truman Capote

#Character #Hollies #Breakfast

You can’t give your heart to a wild thing.
-- Truman Capote

#Heartbreak #Heartbroken #Giving

The average personality re-shapes frequently, every few years even our bodies undergo a complete overhaul-desirable or not, it is a natural thing that we should change.
-- Truman Capote

#Average #Years #Personality

It is very seldom that a person loves anyone they cannot in some way envy.
-- Truman Capote

#Envy #Way #Persons

Oh Jesus God we did belong to each other. He was mine.
-- Truman Capote

#Jesus

Reading dreams. That's what started her walking down the road. Every day she'd walk a little further: a mile, and come home. Two miles, and come home. One day she just kept on.
-- Truman Capote

#Dream #Reading #Home

Lively, too. Talky as a jaybird. With something smart to say on every subject: better than the radio.
-- Truman Capote

#Smart #Radio #Lively

Talent is a valued tormentor.
-- Truman Capote

#Talent

Champagne does have one regular drawback: swilled as a regular thing a certain sourness settles in the tummy, and the result is permanent bad breath. Really incurable.
-- Truman Capote

#Alcohol #Doe #Settling

How do I look so young? Quite simple: a complete vegetable diet, 12 hours sleep a night, and lots and lots of make-up.
-- Truman Capote

#Sleep #Simple #Night