Truman Capote Quotes

My yardstick is how somebody treats me.

We all, sometimes, leave each other there under the skies, and we never understand why.

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

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

Then why does Kenneth Anger wear a picture locket on a chain around his neck? On one side of the locket there is a picture of you; on the other there is an image of a frog with an inscription: "Bobby Beausoleil changed into a frog by Kenneth Anger." A voodoo amulet, so to say.

[T]he army of wrongness rampant in the world might as well march over me.

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

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.

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

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.

Talent, and genius as well, is like a grain of pearl sand shifting about in the creative mind. A valued tormentor.

A disquieting loneliness came into my life, but it induced no hunger for friends of longer acquaintance: they seemed now like a salt-free, sugarless diet.

I'd met Sharon Tate at the Cannes Film Festival.

One always likes one's latest book best. That's a natural feeling.

...there was a blond misty boy sitting beside me, and he looked at me, and I at him, and we were not strangers: our hands moved towards each other to embrace. I never heard his voice, for we did not speak; it is a shame, I should so like the memory of it. Loneliness, like fever, thrives on night, but there with him light broke, breaking in the trees like birdsong, and when sunrise came, he loosened his fingers from mine, and walked away, that misty boy, my friend.

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

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

Most people don't find their creativity. There are more unsung geniuses that don't even know they have great talent.

I guess if you're that thin and that small you don't need to take up too much space or breathe that much air. You just keep on going.

If there is no mystery, for the artist, to solve inside of his art, then there's no point in it....for me, every act of the art of solving a mystery.

I'm scarcely an enfant!

A beautiful day with the buoyancy of a bird.

Any work of art, provided it springs from a sincere motivation to further understanding between people, is an act of faith and therefore is an act of love.

When I'm writing, I never write more than four hours a day.

New York is a diamond iceberg floating in river water.

All writing, all art, is an act of faith. If one tries to contribute to human understanding, how can that be called decadent? It's like saying a declaration of love is an act of decadence. Any work of art, provide it springs from a sincere motivation to further understanding between people, is an act of faith and therefore is an act of love.

Love should be allowed. I’m all for it. Now that I’ve got a pretty good idea what it is.

I'm not a philosopher.

Good writing is rewriting.

She had only one flaw. She was perfect, otherwise whe was perfect.

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.

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.

I've lived a lot in communist countries and they're intensely interested in money. I think they are more interested in money than capitalists are. They're the most materialistic people in the world. What they're actually living for is material things. The irony of that is that in communist countries there isn't anything to buy.

I'm one of the world's greatest pencil sharpeners.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Writing in the first person automatically gives you a point of view.

you got to want it to be good, and I don't want it.

Brazil was beastly but Buenos Aires the best. Not Tiffany's, but almost.

Sicily is more beautiful than any woman.

I thought of the future, and spoke of the past.

New York is the only real city-city.

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

[Y]outh is hardly human: it can't be, for the young never believe they will die...especially would they never believe that death comes, and often, in forms other than the natural one.

There is nobody in the world that you can't get if you really concentrate on it, if you really want them. You've got to want it to the exclusion of everything else.