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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.

-Truman Capote

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But Mostly They Were

Truman Capote

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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.

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

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

[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.

She Is Pure Alice In Wonderland, And Her Appearance And Demeanor Are A Nicely Judged Mix Of The Red Queen And A Flamingo.

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

Love And Friendship

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

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.

The Better The Actor, The More Stupid He Is.

There's Lots Of Things You Don't Know. All Kinds Of Strange Things . . . Mostly They Happened Before We Were Born: That Makes Them Seem To Me So Much More Real.

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.

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

You're Wonderful. Unique. I Love You.

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

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 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.

My Major Regret In Life Is That My Childhood Was Unnecessarily Lonely.

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.

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.

The Brain May Take Advice, But Not The Heart.

Are The Dead As Lonesome As The Living?

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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 Want To Still Be Me When I Wake Up One Fine Morning And Have Breakfast At Tiffany´s.

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.

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.

Mick Jagger Is About As Sexy As A Pissing Toad.

Home Is Where You Feel At Home. I'm Still Looking.

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

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

If You Sweep A House, And Tend Its Fires And Fill Its Stove, And There Is Love In You All The Years You Are Doing This, Then You And That House Are Married, That House Is Yours.

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.

Oh Jesus God We Did Belong To Each Other. He Was Mine.

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

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.

Venice Is Like Eating An Entire Box Of Chocolate Liqueurs In One Go.

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

I Think To Be A Good Teacher You Need An Enormous Amount Of Patience And I'm A Very Impatient Person.

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

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.

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I've Never Been A Teacher In My Life.

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 Better To Look At The Sky Than Live There

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

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.

Those Fellows, They're Always Crying Over Killers. Never A Thought For The Victims.

[l]ove, Having No Geography, Knows No Boundaries.

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.

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All Literature Is Gossip.

I Dream Of Eagles And Bring Forth Sparrows.

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

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.

It Takes A Lot Of Bad Writing To Get To A Little Good Writing.

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

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.

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.

The Wind Is Us-- It Gathers And Remembers All Our Voices, Then Sends Them Talking And Telling Through The Leaves And The Fields.

If Francoise Sagan Hadn't Written A Book Called A Chateau In Sweden, I Would Certainly Write A Short Story Called A Chateau In Puerto Rico. And I May Yet.

The Problem With Living Outside The Law Is That You No Longer Have Its Protection.

The Good Thing About Masturbation Is That You Don't Have To Get Dressed Up For It.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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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

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.

I Used To Spend All Of My Time Projecting. I Was Never In The Moment. It Was Always Tomorrow Or Next Week Or Two Months From Now. That Was One Of The Reasons I Always Had This Sense Of Anxiety.

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.

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

I've Got Something Inside Of Me, Peasantlike And Stubborn, And I'm In It Till The End Of The Race.

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

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.

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.

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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.

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Are There Any Writers On The Literary Scene Whom I Consider Truly Great? Yes: Truman Capote.

I'm Scarcely An Enfant!

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

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

One Always Likes One's Latest Book Best. That's A Natural Feeling.

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Good Writing Is Rewriting.

You Can't Blame A Writer For What The Characters Say.

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'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.

Jay Sebring Cut My Hair A Couple Of Times.

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

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.

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.

Talent Is A Valued Tormentor.

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!

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

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.

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

One Day At A Time

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.

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.

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

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

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

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 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.

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

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.

In My Garden, After A Rainfall, You Can Faintly, Yes, Hear The Breaking Of New Blooms.

I'm Sure Proust Was A Big Bore.

New York Is The Only Real City-city.

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.

Since Each Story Presents Its Own Technical Problems, Obviously One Can't Generalize About Them On A Two-times-two-equals-four Basis. Finding The Right Form For Your Story Is Simply To Realize The Most Natural Way Of Telling The Story. The Test Of Whether Or Not A Writer Has Defined The Natural Shape Of His Story Is Just This: After Reading It, Can You Imagine It Differently, Or Does It Silence Your Imagination And Seem To You Absolute And Final? As An Orange Is Final. As An Orange Is Something Nature Has Made Just Right.

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.

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

I Feel That All A Writer Has Is His Own Experience.

I Thought Of The Future, And Spoke Of The Past.

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.

I Can See Every Monster As They Come In.

You Can Do Films For The Fun Of It, Or The Thrill Of It, But Certain Films You Can't Do Unless There's Something Driving You, Something You Have A Passion For That Will Pull You Through.

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.

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

I'd Met Sharon Tate At The Cannes Film Festival.

Cannes Film Festival

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Think Of Nothing Things Think Of Wind

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.

You Got To Want It To Be Good, And I Don't Want It.

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

A Man Who Doesn't Dream Is Like A Man Who Doesn't Sweat. He Stores Up A Lot Of Poison.

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

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.

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.

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

Gasping For Breath, The Body Still Battling For Life.

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

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.

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

Would You Reach In The Drawer There And Give Me My Purse. A Girl Doesn't Read This Sort Of Thing Without Her Lipstick.

Intelligence Alone Can't Make A Good Writer And Style Alone Can't Make A Good Writer - That Is, Not A Really Important Or Significant Writer - But The Two Things Together Make A Really Good Writer.

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

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.

Failure Is The Condiment That Gives Success Its Flavor.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

There Is Only One Unpardonable Sin--deliberate Cruelty. All Else Can Be Forgiven.

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

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.

One Of The Most Difficult Things In Writing A Novel Or Anything At All Is To Choose The Point Of View From Which It's Going To Be Told.

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

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.

Life Is Difficult Enough Without Meryl Streep Movies.

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.

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.

All Artists Are Two-headed Calves.

She Sounds The Way Bananas Taste.

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

Breakfast At Tiffanys

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

Breakfast At Tiffanys

Wrinkles And Bones, White Hair And Diamonds: I Can't Wait.

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.

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

A Boy Has To Peddle His Book.

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

I Think My Greatest Talent Really Is For Friendship.

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

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

Yes: But Aren't Love And Marriage Notoriously Synonymous In The Minds Of Most Women? Certainly Very Few Men Get The First Without Promising The Second: Love, That Is--if It's Just A Matter Of Spreading Her Legs, Almost Any Woman Will Do That For Nothing.

Love And Marriage

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

I Don't Think I've Ever Drunk Champagne Before Breakfast Before. With Breakfast On Several Occasions, But Never Before Before.

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.

I Despise People Who Can't Control Themselves.

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.

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

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.

A Beautiful Day With The Buoyancy Of A Bird.

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

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

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

Nowhere To Turn

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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Andrei Platonov

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