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All His Prayers Of The Past Had Been Simple Concrete Requests: God, Give Me A Bicycle, A Knife With Seven Blades, A Box Of Oil Paints. Only How, How, Could You Say Something So Indefinite, So Meaningless As This: God, Let Me Be Loved.

-Truman Capote

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All His Prayers Of

Truman Capote

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All His Prayers Of The Past Had Been Simple Concrete Requests: God, Give Me A Bicycle, A Knife With Seven Blades, A Box Of Oil Paints. Only How, How, Could You Say Something So Indefinite, So Meaningless As This: God, Let Me Be Loved.

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When You've Got Nowhere To Turn, Turn On The Gas.

Nowhere To Turn

You Can’t Give Your Heart To A Wild Thing.

It Should Take You About Four Seconds To Walk From Here To The Door. I'll Give You Two.

Shoot, Boy, The Country's Just Fulla Folks What Knows Everything, And Don't Understand Nothing, Just Fullofem.

Talent Is A Valued Tormentor.

How Do I Look So Young? Quite Simple: A Complete Vegetable Diet, 12 Hours Sleep A Night, And Lots And Lots Of Make-up.

It Snowed All Week. Wheels And Footsteps Moved Soundlessly On The Street, As If The Business Of Living Continued Secretly Behind A Pale But Impenetrable Curtain. In The Falling Quiet There Was No Sky Or Earth, Only Snow Lifting In The Wind, Frosting The Window Glass, Chilling The Rooms, Deadening And Hushing The City. At All Hours It Was Necessary To Keep A Lamp Lighted, And Mrs. Miller Lost Track Of The Days: Friday Was No Different From Saturday And On Sunday She Went To The Grocery: Closed, Of Course.

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

Those Final Weeks, Spanning End Of Summer And The Beginning Of Another Autumn, Are Blurred In Memory, Perhaps Because Our Understanding Of Each Other Had Reached That Sweet Depth Where Two People Communicate More Often In Silence Than In Words: An Affectionate Quietness Replaces The Tensions, The Unrelaxed Chatter And Chasing About That Produce A Friendship’s More Showy, More, In The Surface Sense, Dramatic Moments.

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.

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

Love Is A Chain Of Love As Nature Is A Chain Of Life.

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.

It's Worth Your Life To Order An Omelette In Most Restaurants. You Never Know What You're Going To Get.

Really Being Friends Is The Most Important Part, I Think, Of Any Relationship.

Some Prisons Don't Allow Guitar Because The Strings Can Be Detached And Used As Weapons.

I Am Always Drawn Back To Places Where I Have Lived, The Houses And Their Neighborhoods.

I'm Very Scared, Buster. Yes, At Last. Because It Could Go On Forever. Not Knowing What's Yours Until You've Thrown It Away.

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.

Never Love A Wild Thing...if You Let Yourself Love A Wild Thing. You'll End Up Looking At The Sky.

Breakfast At Tiffanys

To Me, The Greatest Pleasure Of Writing Is Not What It's About, But The Inner Music That Words Make.

Of Many Magics, One Is Watching A Beloved Sleep: Free Of Eyes And Awareness, You For A Sweet Moment Hold The Heart Of Him; Helpless, He Is Then All, And However Irrationally, You Have Trusted Him To Be, Man-pure, Child-tender.

The Quietness Of His Tone Italicized The Malice Of His Reply.

With One Exception Everybody Who Has Ever Been Involved With Me Is Still A Great Friend Of Mine.

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.

I'm One Of The World's Greatest Pencil Sharpeners.

Pencil Sharpeners

First, A Gorgeous Breakfast: Just Everything You Can Imagine From Flapjacks And Fried Squirrel To Hominy Grits And Honey In The Comb...we're So Impatient To Get At The Presents We Can't Eat A Mouthful.

Whatever Relationship You Have, Man Or Woman, You Have To Be Very Attentive And You Have To Be A Very Good Friend To Them Regardless Of What They Do.

If You Weren't Here, If You Could Be Anywhere You Wanted To Be, Doing Anything You Wanted To Do, Where Would You Be And What Would You Be Doing?

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.

All Artists Are Two-headed Calves.

All Literature Is Gossip.

Ever Since I Was A Child, Folks Have Thought They Had Me Pegged, Because Of The Way I Am, The Way I Talk. And They're Always Wrong.

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.

Have You Never Heard What The Wise Men Say: All Of The Future Exists In The Past.

And In This Moment, Like A Swift Intake Of Breath, The Rain Came.

There Is Really No Practical Help That One Can Offer: It Is A Matter Of Self-discovery, Of One's Own Conviction, Or Working With One's Own Work; Your Style Is What Seems Natural To You. It Is A Long Process Of Discovery, One That Never Ends. I Am Working At It, And Will Be As Long As I Live.

June, July, All Through The Warm Months She Hibernated Like A Winter Animal Who Did Not Know Spring Had Come And Gone.

Of Course People Couldn't Help But Think I Must Be A Bit Of A Dyke Myself. And Of Course I Am. Everyone Is: A Bit. So What? That Never Discouraged A Man Yet, In Fact It Seems To Goad Them On.

I Dream Of Eagles And Bring Forth Sparrows.

Of Course, At Their Best, Movies Are Anti-literature And, As A Medium, Belong Not To Writers, Not To Actors, But To Directors.

I'll Never Get Used To Anything. Anybody That Does They Might As Well Be Dead.

I Think I Would Have Written Five Times As Much As I've Written If I Didn't Have This Terrible Sense Of Perfection.

I Told You: You Can Make Yourself Love Anybody.

Technically I Feel Total Fluidity In Writing. I Feel There's Nothing Technically That I Can't Do The Way A Certain Sort Of Pianist Feels That. But That Doesn't Mean It Comes Easily. It Doesn't.

Poor Slob Without A Name. It's A Little Inconvenient, His Not Having A Name. But I Haven't The Right To Give Him One: He'll Have To Wait Until He Belongs To Somebody. We Just Sort Of Took Up By The River One Day, We Don't Belong To Each Other: He's An Independent, And So Am I. I Don't Want To Own Anything Until I Know I've Found The Place Where Me And Things Belong Together.

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.

I'm Not A Character In Any Of My Books.

I'm Not A Philosopher.

Finishing A Book Is Just Like You Took A Child Out In The Back Yard And Shot It.

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.

All Human Life Has Its Seasons And Cycles, And No One's Personal Chaos Can Be Permanent. Winter, After All, Gives Way To Spring And Summer, Though Sometimes When Branches Stay Dark And The Earth Cracks With Ice, One Thinks They Will Never Come, That Spring, And That Summer, But They Do, And Always.

...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.

One Day, I Started Writing, Not Knowing That I Had Chained Myself For Life To A Noble But Merciless Master. When God Hands You A Gift, He Also Hands You A Whip; And The Whip Is Intended Solely For Self-flagellation... I'm Here Alone In My Dark Madness, All By Myself With My Deck Of Cards - And, Of Course, The Whip God Gave Me.

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.

I Met Lee Harvey Oswald, In Moscow Just After He Defected. One Night I Was Having Dinner With A Friend, An Italian Newspaper Correspondent, And When He Came By To Pick Me Up He Asked Me If I'd Mind Going With Him First To Talk To A Young American Defector, One Lee Harvey Oswald. Oswald Was Staying At The Metropole, An Old Czarist Hotel Just Off Kremlin Square.

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.

Writing In The First Person Automatically Gives You A Point Of View.

Every Day Is A New Day With Me. All Holds Are Off. All Contracts Are Forgotten.

I Also Write The Last Paragraph Or Page Of A Story First. That Way I Always Know What I'm Working Towards.

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.

A Work Of Art Is One Of Mystery, The One Extreme Magic; Everything Else Is Either Arithmetic Or Biology.

It's Redundant To Die In Los Angeles.

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.

Breakfast At Tiffanys

Traveling Wears Me Out.

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.

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 Reassurerance Of Our Identities? I Tell You, My Dear, Narcissus Was So Egotist...he Was Merely Another Of Us Who, In Our Unshatterable Isolation, Recognized, On Seeing His Reflection, The Beautiful Comrade, The Only Inseparatable Love...poor Narcissus, Possibly The Only Human Who Was Ever Honest On This Point.

I've Never Had An Affair With Somebody Who Wasn't At The Same Time A Very Good Friend Of Mine, If You See What I Mean.

Anticipation Is Anxiety. I Have Always Had A Very Extreme Anxiety Thing.

Here Is A Hall Without Exit, A Tunnel Without End.

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.

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.

The Way His Plump Hand Clutched At Her Hip Seemed Somehow Improper; Not Morally, Aesthetically.

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.

That's All A Writer Has To Write About - What He Sees And Hears And What Not.

Hulga The Whole While Hollering Like A Half-slaughtered Hog. (attention, Students Of Literature! Alliteration - Have You Noticed? - Is My Least Vice.)

Leave It To Me: I'm Always Top Banana In The Shock Department.

She Took Off Her Dark Glasses And Squinted At Me. It Was As Though Her Eyes Were Shattered Prisms, The Dots Of Blue And Gray And Green Like Broken Bits Of Sparkle.

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.

Unexpected Gifts

I'm Scarcely An Enfant!

I Was Terribly Sure Trees And Flowers Were The Same As Birds Or People. That They Thought Things And Talked Among Themselves. And We Could Hear Them If We Really Tried. It Was Just A Matter Of Emptying Your Head Of All Other Sounds. Being Very Quiet And Listening Very Hard. Sometimes I Still Believe That. But One Can Never Get Quiet Enough.

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.

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.

The Enemy Was Anyone Who Was Someone He Wanted To Be Or Who Had Anything He Wanted To Have.

I've Never Worked For A Newspaper. I've Had Some Very Bad Reviews In Newspapers.

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.

Many Universities Have Asked Me To Come For A Semester But I Don't Want To Do It Because I Don't Have The Patience.

Life Is Difficult Enough Without Meryl Streep Movies.

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.

I Couldn't Understand A Sense Of Unease That Multiplied Until I Could Hear My Heart Beating.

Our Real Fears Are The Sounds Of Footsteps Walking In The Corridors Of Our Minds, And The Anxieties, The Phantom Floatings, They Create.

But I'm Not A Saint Yet. I'm An Alcoholic. I'm A Drug Addict. I'm Homosexual. I'm A Genius.

Lee Harvey Oswald Was Boiling Over About Everything: The American Ambassador; The Russians-he Was Mad At Them Because They Wouldn't Let Him Stay In Moscow. We Talked To Him For About Half An Hour, And My Italian Friend Didn't Think The Guy Was Worth Filing A Story About. Just Another Paranoid Hysteric; The Moscow Woods Were Rampant With Those. I Never Thought About Him Again, Not Until Many Years Later. Not Until After The Assassination When I Saw His Picture Flashed On Television.

I Knew Lee Harvey Oswald, And I Knew Jack Kennedy. The Odds Against That-one Person Knowing All Four Of Those Men-must Be Astounding.

We All, Sometimes, Leave Each Other There Under The Skies, And We Never Understand Why.

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'm Sure Proust Was A Big Bore.

Lively, Too. Talky As A Jaybird. With Something Smart To Say On Every Subject: Better Than The Radio.

But I Know What I Like.' She Smiled, And Et The Cat Drop To The Floor. 'it's Like Tiffany's,'she Said. 'not That I Give A Hoot About Jewellery. Diamonds, Yes. But It's Tacky To Wear Diamonds Before You're Forty; And Even That's Risky.

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.

Randolph," He Said, "were You Ever As Young As Me?" And Randolph Said: "i Was Never So Old.

We Don't Belong To Each Other: He's An Independent, And So Am I.

Breakfast At Tiffanys

Everybody Has To Feel Superior To Somebody," She Said. "but It's Customary To Present A Little Proof Before You Take The Privilege.

She Had Only One Flaw. She Was Perfect, Otherwise Whe Was Perfect.

I Don't Use A Typewriter, I Write Longhand, With A Pencil. Essentially I'm A Horizontal Writer. I Think Better When I'm Lying Down.

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.

I Prefer To Underwrite. Simple, Clear As A Country Creek.

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.

I Think My Greatest Talent Really Is For Friendship.

Most Secrets Should Never Be Told, But Especially Those That Are More Menacing To The Listener Than To The Teller.

I'll Pay You A Million Dollars If You Tell Your Life Story For True.

I Never Had A Rejection Slip In My Life.

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.

It Was The Most Haunting Room I've Ever Seen. Because You Know What's In It? All The Leftovers, All The Paraphernalia That The Different Condemned Men Had Had With Them In The "holding" Cells.

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.

Sicily Is More Beautiful Than Any Woman.

I Just Live One Day At A Time. That's My New Theory In Life.

One Day At A Time

I Don't Care What Anybody Says About Me As Long As It Isn't True.

You Know The Days When You Get The Mean Reds? Paul Varjak: The Mean Reds. You Mean Like The Blues? Holly Golightly: No. The Blues Are Because You’re Getting Fat, And Maybe It’s Been Raining Too Long. You’re Just Sad, That’s All. The Mean Reds Are Horrible. Suddenly You’re Afraid, And You Don’t Know What You’re Afraid Of. Do You Ever Get That Feeling?

The More You Know About Something, The Harder It Becomes. You Become More And More Of A Perfectionist. I Think It's A Curse... It's A Form Of Illness!

If You Can't Be Friends With A Lover, Then Forget It. It's Not Going To Work.

Oh, I Adore To Cook. It Makes Me Feel So Mindless In A Worthwhile Way.

It Is The Want To Know The End That Makes Us Believe In God, Or Witchcraft, Believe, At Least, In Something

Mick Jagger Moves Like A Parody Between A Majorette Girl And Fred Astaire.

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.

It's A Scientific Fact That If You Stay In California You Lose One Point Of Your Iq Every Year.

Gasping For Breath, The Body Still Battling For Life.

He Loved Her, He Loved Her, And Until He'd Loved Her She Had Never Minded Being Alone.

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.

Well, I'm About As Tall As A Shotgun, And Just As Noisy.

Still, When All Is Said, Somewhere One Must Belong: Even The Soaring Falcon Returns To Its Master's Wrist.

Love Should Be Allowed. I’m All For It. Now That I’ve Got A Pretty Good Idea What It Is.

There Is Such An Animal As A Nonstylist, Only They're Not Writers - They're Typists.

I've Tried To Believe, But I Don't, I Can't, And There's No Use Pretending.

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.

Fame Is Only Good For One Thing - They Will Cash Your Check In A Small Town.

There’s Got To Be Something Wrong With Us. To Do What We Did.

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.

In California Everyone Goes To A Therapist, Is A Therapist, Or Is A Therapist Going To A Therapist.

Actually, I Think Friendship And Love Are Exactly The Same Thing.

Love And Friendship

What We Want Most Is To Be Held...and Told..that Everything (everything Is A Funny Thing, Is Baby Milk And Papa's Eyes, Is Roaring Logs On A Cold Morning, Is Hoot Owls And The Boy Who Makes You Cry After School, Is Mama's Long Hair, Is Being Afraid And Twisted Faces On The Bedroom Wall)...is Going To Be Alright.

I Believe More In The Scissors Than I Do In The Pencil.

She Sounds The Way Bananas Taste.

I've Been Working, Working, Working, And You Know, Sometimes You Look Back At Your Work And You See That It Just Isn't Any Good.

But He Does Look Stupid.' Yearning. Not Stupid. He Wants Awfully To Be On The Inside Staring Out: Anybody With Their Nose Pressed Against A Glass Is Liable To Look Stupid.

The Feeble-minded, The Neurotic, The Criminal, Perhaps, Also, The Artist, Have Unpredictability And Perverted Innocence In Common.

I Hated Hemingway. I Liked Faulkner But He Was A Bore.

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.

Half The People Who Snuff People, That's What They Want: Recognition. Get Their Picture In The Paper.

I Live In Brooklyn. By Choice. Those Ignorant Of Its Allures Are Entitled To Wonder Why.

Don't Wanna Sleep, Don't Wanna Die, Just Wanna Go A-travellin' Through The Pastures Of The Sky

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.

I Don't Want To Own Anything Until I Find A Place Where Me And Things Go Together.

When God Hands You A Gift, He Also Hands You A Whip; And The Whip Is Intended For Self-flagellation Solely.

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'd Met Sharon Tate At The Cannes Film Festival.

Cannes Film Festival

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.

Hot Weather Opens The Skull Of A City, Exposing Its White Brain, And Its Heart Of Nerves, Which Sizzle Like The Wires Inside A Lightbulb. And There Exudes A Sour Extra-human Smell That Makes The Very Stone Seem Flesh-alive, Webbed And Pulsing.

[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.

[t]he Army Of Wrongness Rampant In The World Might As Well March Over Me.

Life Is A Moderately Good Play With A Badly Written Third Act.

The Most Dangerous Thing In The World Is To Make A Friend Of An Englishman, Because He'll Come Sleep In Your Closet Rather Than Spend 10 Shillings On A Hotel.

Are The Dead As Lonesome As The Living?

A Beautiful Day With The Buoyancy Of A Bird.

If You Have A Single Narrator, A Person Like An "i" - "'i' Did This" And "'i' Did That" - It Automatically Solves The Most Difficult Problem In Writing.

At One Time I Used To Keep Notebooks With Outlines For Stories. But I Found Doing This Somehow Deadened The Idea In My Imagination. If The Notion Is Good Enough, If It Truly Belongs To You, Then You Can't Forget It-it Will Haunt You Till It's Written.

No One Will Ever Know What 'in Cold Blood' Took Out Of Me. It Scraped Me Right Down To The Marrow Of My Bones. It Nearly Killed Me. I Think, In A Way, It Did Kill Me.

But It's Sunday, Mr. Bell. Clocks Are Slow On Sundays.

There Is No Shame — Having A Dirty Face — The Shame Comes When You Keep It Dirty.

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.

You're Wonderful. Unique. I Love You.

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.

When I Make Fried Chicken I Always Serve Masses And Masses Of Fresh Mangos. It's A Great Combination.

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?

Think Of Nothing Things Think Of Wind

I Can See Every Monster As They Come In.

I Like To Talk On Tv About Those Things That Aren't Worth Writing About.

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.

I Haven't Anything Against Whores, Except This: Some Of Them May Have An Honest Tongue But They All Have Dishonest Hearts.

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.

Most People Who Become Suddenly Famous Overnight Will Find That They Lose Practically Eighty Percent Of Their Friends. Your Old Friends Just Can't Stand It For Some Reason.

When The Prisoner Is Brought Down From Death Row He Steps From The Elevator Directly Into A "holding" Room That Adjoins The Witness Room. There Are Two Cells In This "holding" Room, Two, In Case It's A Double Execution. They're Ordinary Cells, Just Like This One, And The Prisoner Spends His Last Night There Before His Execution In The Morning, Reading, Listening To The Radio, Playing Cards With The Guards.

If A Man Doesn't Like Baseball, Then He Must Like Horses, And If He Doesn't Like Either Of Them, Well, I'm In Trouble Anyway: He Don't Like Girls.

You Can Love Somebody Without It Being Like That. You Keep Them A Stranger, A Stranger Who's A Friend.

I Loved Her Enough To Forget Myself, My Self Pitying Despairs, And Be Content That Something She Thought Happy Was Going To Happen.

It Is Very Seldom That A Person Loves Anyone They Cannot In Some Way Envy.

When I'm Writing, I Never Write More Than Four Hours A Day.

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.

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.

I Think The Only Person A Writer Has An Obligation To Is Himself. If What I Write Doesn't Fulfill Something In Me, If I Don't Honestly Feel It's The Best I Can Do, Then I'm Miserable.

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.

Let's Take Everything Just As It Is.

Great Fury, Like Great Whisky, Requires Long Fermentation.

I Will Say Only That All A Writer Has To Work With Is The Material He Has Gathered As The Result Of His Own Endeavor And Observations, And He Cannot Be Denied The Right To Use It. Condemn, But Not Deny.

When I Am Writing, I Try To Do It Five Hours A Day But I Spend About Two Of Those Just Fooling Around.

Aprils Have Never Meant Much To Me, Autumns Seem That Season Of Beginning, Spring.

The Brain May Take Advice, But Not The Heart.

That's Not Writing, That's Typing

That Isn't Writing At All, It's Typing.

I Am A Completely Horizontal Author. I Can't Think Unless I'm Lying Down, Either In Bed Or Stretched On A Couch.

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Jan Peter Balkenende

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