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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.

-Truman Capote

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I'll Wager At The

Truman Capote

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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.

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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 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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 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.

Talent Is A Valued Tormentor.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

New York Is The Only Real City-city.

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.

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

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.

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.

Imagination, Of Course, Can Open Any Door - Turn The Key And Let Terror Walk Right In.

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.

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.

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

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.

I Think Of Myself As A Stylist, And Stylists Can Become Notoriously Obsessed With The Placing Of A Comma, The Weight Of A Semicolon.

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

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

Let's Take Everything Just As It Is.

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?

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Dizzy With Excitement Is No Mere Phrase.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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'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.

...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.

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 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.

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

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.

I Always Felt That Nobody Was Going To Understand Me, Going To Understand What I Felt About Things. I Guess That's Why I Started Writing. At Least On Paper I Could Put Down What I Thought.

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.

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

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

Breakfast At Tiffanys

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.

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.

Think Of Nothing Things Think Of Wind

Gasping For Breath, The Body Still Battling For Life.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Jay Sebring Cut My Hair A Couple Of Times.

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've Always Seen Myself As A Winner, Even As A Kid. If I Hadn't, I Just Might Have Gone Down The Drain A Couple Of Times. I've Got Something Inside Of Me, Peasantlike And Stubborn, And I'm In It 'til The End Of The Race.

Self Confidence

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.

She Sounds The Way Bananas Taste.

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

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 Told You: You Can Make Yourself Love Anybody.

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 Think Most People Are Very, Very Much Motivated By Sex - Greed, Sex, And Hunger.

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.

Anyone Who Ever Gave You Confidence, You Owe Them A Lot.

Breakfast At Tiffanys

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

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

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

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

Nowhere To Turn

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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?

And Since Gin To Artifice Bears The Same Relation As Tears To Mascara, Her Attractions At Once Dissembled.

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

Pencil Sharpeners

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.

That's Not Writing, That's Typing

It's Odd About Tattoos. I've Talked To Several Hundred Men Convicted Of Homicide-multiple Homicide, In Most Cases. The Only Common Denominate- I Could Find Among Them Was Tattoos. A Good Eighty Percent Of Them Were Heavily Tattooed.

I Don't Mean I'd Mind Being Rich And Famous. That's Very Much On My Schedule, And Someday I'll Try To Get Around To It; But If It Happens, I'd Like To Have My Ego Tagging Along. I Want To Still Be Me When I Wake Up One Fine Morning And Have Breakfast At Tiffany's.

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

...of All Things This Was The Saddest, That Life Goes On: If One Leaves One's Lover, Life Should Stop For Him, And If One Disappears From The World, Then The World Should Stop, Too: And It Never Did. And That Was The Real Reason For Most People Getting Up In The Morning: Not Because It Would Matter But Because It Wouldn't.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Great Fury, Like Great Whisky, Requires Long Fermentation.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

It's Redundant To Die In Los Angeles.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

He’d Always Been Willing To Confess His Faults, For, By Admitting Them, It Was As If He Made Them No Longer Exist.

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.

I'm Scarcely An Enfant!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

It May Be Normal, Darling; But I'd Rather Be Natural.

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

Love And Friendship

Before Birth; Yes, What Time Was It Then? A Time Like Now, And When They Were Dead, It Would Be Still Like Now: These Trees, That Sky, This Earth, Those Acorn Seeds, Sun And Wind, All The Same, While They, With Dust-turned Hearts, Change Only.

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.

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

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

The Better The Actor, The More Stupid He Is.

Traveling Wears Me Out.

Failure Is The Condiment That Gives Success Its Flavor.

My Yardstick Is How Somebody Treats Me.

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.

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

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

A Beautiful Day With The Buoyancy Of A Bird.

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

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

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

Are The Dead As Lonesome As The Living?

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.

Life Is Difficult Enough Without Meryl Streep Movies.

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

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

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.

I'm Not A Philosopher.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Clocks Indeed Must Have Their Sacrifice: What Is Death But An Offering To Time And Eternity?

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

It’s Better To Look At The Sky Than Live There

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

Breakfast At Tiffanys

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.

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.

Sometimes When I Think How Good My Book Can Be, I Can Hardly Breathe.

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

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.

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

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

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