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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.

-Truman Capote

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I've Always Seen Myself

Truman Capote

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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.

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Self Confidence

More From Truman Capote

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

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

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

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.

[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.

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?

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

Are The Dead As Lonesome As The Living?

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

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.

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

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

Failure Is The Condiment That Gives Success Its Flavor.

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.

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

So The Days, The Last Days, Blow About In A Memory, Hazy Autumnal, All Alike As Leaves: Until A Day Unlike Any Other I've Lived

The 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.

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

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

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

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

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.

Good Writing Is Rewriting.

Talent Is A Valued Tormentor.

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

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

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.

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.

It's Redundant To Die In Los Angeles.

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.

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.

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

That's The Difference Between The Serious Artist And The Craftsman--the Craftsman Can Take Material And Because Of His Abilities Do A Professional Job Of It. The Serious Artist, Like Proust, Is Like An Object Caught By A Wave And Swept To Shore. He's Obsessed By His Material; It's Like A Venom Working In His Blood And The Art Is The Antidote.

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

The Brain May Take Advice, But Not The Heart.

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.

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

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.

I've Never Been A Teacher In My Life.

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

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.

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

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.

And Yes, To Answer You Seriously, I Am Beginning To Be... Well, Not Bored, But Tempted; Afraid, But Tempted. When You've Been In Pain For A Long Time, When You Wake Up Every Morning With A Rising Sense Of Hysteria, Then Boredom Is What You Want, Marathon Sleeps, A Silence In Yourself.

I’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.

I Dream Of Eagles And Bring Forth Sparrows.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

Cannes Film Festival

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

Reading Dreams. That's What Started Her Walking Down The Road. Every Day She'd Walk A Little Further: A Mile, And Come Home. Two Miles, And Come Home. One Day She Just Kept On.

I Told You: You Can Make Yourself Love Anybody.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

A Boy Has To Peddle His Book.

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

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.

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

Dizzy With Excitement Is No Mere Phrase.

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

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

...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.

Let's Take Everything Just As It Is.

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.

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

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

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.

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

I Can See Every Monster As They Come In.

Think Of Nothing Things Think Of Wind

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

I Know The Next Best Thing Is Often The Very Best.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

All Artists Are Two-headed Calves.

She Sounds The Way Bananas Taste.

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.

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

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!

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

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

That's Not Writing, That's Typing

Great Fury, Like Great Whisky, Requires Long Fermentation.

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

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

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

Breakfast At Tiffanys

The Better The Actor, The More Stupid He Is.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

Love And Friendship

Talent, And Genius As Well, Is Like A Grain Of Pearl Sand Shifting About In The Creative Mind. A Valued Tormentor.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Breakfast At Tiffanys

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.

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

Breakfast At Tiffanys

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.

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.

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

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.

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 Thought Of The Future, And Spoke Of The Past.

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.

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.

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

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'm Scarcely An Enfant!

Life Is Difficult Enough Without Meryl Streep Movies.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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 Guess If You're That Thin And That Small You Don't Need To Take Up Too Much Space Or Breathe That Much Air. You Just Keep On Going.

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.

Traveling Wears Me Out.

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.

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

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

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

I'm Not A Philosopher.

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

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.

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

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'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.

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

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

Jay Sebring Cut My Hair A Couple Of Times.

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.

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.

I Despise People Who Can't Control Themselves.

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

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

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

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.

Mick Jagger Is About As Sexy As A Pissing Toad.

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.

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

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.

All Literature Is Gossip.

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

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.

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.

Gasping For Breath, The Body Still Battling For Life.

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

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

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