I'd rather have cancer than a dishonest heart. Which isn't being pious. Just practical. Cancer may cool you, but the other's sure to.

If you can't be friends with a lover, then forget it. It's not going to work.

The average personality reshapes frequently, every few years even our bodies undergo a complete overhaul - desirable or not, it is a natural thing that we should change. All right, here were two people who never would change. That is what Mildred Grossman had in common with Holly Golightly. They would never change because they'd been given their character too soon; which, like sudden riches, leads to a lack of proportion: the one had splurged herself into a top-heavy realist, the other a lopsided romantic.

Personally, I rather think that if you're not creative you've got a problem on your hands. If you are creative you've got a double problem.

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

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

Of course, at their best, movies are anti-literature and, as a medium, belong not to writers, not to actors, but to directors.