Truman Capote Quotes

All literature is gossip.

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

I also write the last paragraph or page of a story first. That way I always know what I'm working towards.

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

Never demean yourself by talking back to a critic, never. Write those letters to the editor in your head, but don't put them on paper.

Most contemporary novelists, especially the American and the French, are too subjective, mesmerized by private demons; theyre enraptured by their navels and confined by a view that ends with their own toes.

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.

I just live one day at a time. That's my new theory in life.

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

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.

And since gin to artifice bears the same relation as tears to mascara, her attractions at once dissembled.

I'll wager at the end a body realizes the Lord has already shown Himself. That things as they are -- her hand circles in a gesture that gathers clouds and kites and grass and Queenie pawing earth over her bone - just what they've always seen, was seeing Him. As for me, I could leave the world with today in my eyes.

In California everyone goes to a therapist, is a therapist, or is a therapist going to a therapist.

My father was quite an attractive guy. He was very intelligent and very amusing. I didn't like him. He was always very nice to me but I just didn't like him.

I always write the end of everything first. I always write the last chapters of my books before I write the beginning....Then I go back to the beginning. I mean, it's always nice to know where you're going is my theory.

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

There was an American girl, Priscilla Johnson. She worked for U.P. in Moscow. She knew [John] Kennedy, and she met [Lee Harvey] Oswald around the same time I did. But I can tell you some­thing else almost as curious.

Shoot, boy, the country's just fulla folks what knows everything, and don't understand nothing, just fullofem.

It's like a jumble of huts in a jungle somewhere. I don't understand how you can live there. It's really, completely dead. Walk along the street, there's nothing moving. I've lived in small Spanish fishing villages which were literally sunny all day long everyday of the week, but they weren't as boring as Los Angeles.

So the days, the last days, blow about in a memory, hazy autumnal, all alike as leaves: until a day unlike any other I've lived

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

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

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.

The way his plump hand clutched at her hip seemed somehow improper; not morally, aesthetically.

Norman Mailer thinks William Burroughs is a genius, which I think is ludicrous beyond words. I don't think William Burroughs has an ounce of talent.

If you happen to capture my imagination for some reason and I decide to write about you and you don't like what I wrote about you, which is entirely possible, then yes, I'm a dangerous writer.

What I 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.

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.

You're wonderful. Unique. I love you.

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.

The true beloveds of this world are in their lover's eyes lilacs opening, ship lights, school bells, a landscape, remembered conversations, friends, a child's Sunday, lost voices, one's favorite suit, autumn and all seasons, memory, yes, it being the earth and water of existence, memory.

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

Every day is a new day with me. All holds are off. All contracts are forgotten.

I despise people who can't control themselves.

would you reach in the drawer there and give me my purse. A girl doesn't read this sort of thing without her lipstick.

But there were moments when she played songs that made you wonder where she learned them, where indeed she came from. Harsh-tender wandering tunes with words that smacked of pinewoods or prairie. One went: Don’t wanna sleep, Don’t wanna die, Just wanna go a-travelin’ through the pastures of the sky; and this one seemed to gratify her the most, for often she continued it long after her hair hard dried, after the sun had gone and there were lighted windows in the dusk.

Love is a chain of love as nature is a chain of life.

I feel that all a writer has is his own experience.

What I do requires fantastic concentration... but you can't be totally alone, or you lose all contact with reality, so even when I'm engrossed and secluded, Jack Dunphy can be there. He's my oldest and best friend, and best critic too.

But mostly they were lies I told; it wasn't my fault, I couldn't remember, because it was as though I'd been to one of those supernatural castles visited by characters in legends: once away, you do not remember, all that is left is the ghostly echo of haunting wonder.

When I am writing, I try to do it five hours a day but I spend about two of those just fooling around.

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

Gasping for breath, the body still battling for life.

Half the people who snuff people, that's what they want: recognition. Get their picture in the paper.

Really being friends is the most important part, I think, of any relationship.

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

I remember things the way they should have been.

It's worth your life to order an omelette in most restaurants. You never know what you're going to get.