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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.

-Truman Capote

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Since Each Story Presents

Truman Capote

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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.

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More From Truman Capote

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Nowhere To Turn

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 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.

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

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 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.

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

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

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

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.

All Literature Is Gossip.

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

The Brain May Take Advice, But Not The Heart.

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.

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

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

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

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

...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.

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

I Think My Greatest Talent Really Is For Friendship.

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.

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.

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.

It's Redundant To Die In Los Angeles.

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

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

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.

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

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?

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.

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

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.

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.

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

[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.

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

I've Never Been A Teacher In My Life.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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?

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

Breakfast At Tiffanys

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

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

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

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.

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

Writing Stopped Being Fun When I Discovered The Difference Between Good Writing And Bad And, Even More Terrifying, The Difference Between It And True Art. And After That, The Whip Came Down.

The 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 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.

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

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

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

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

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.

Sicily Is More Beautiful Than Any Woman.

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

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.

Traveling Wears Me Out.

Let's Take Everything Just As It Is.

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

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

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

Love And Friendship

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.

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

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

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.

I Would Have Liked To Have Known Oscar Wilde Because I Think He Must Have Been Very Amusing And Entertaining.

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

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'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.

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

Good Writing Is Rewriting.

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.

I Never Had A Rejection Slip In My Life.

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.

You're Wonderful. Unique. I Love You.

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

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.

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.

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

I Got This Idea Of Doing A Really Serious Big Work-it Would Be Precisely Like A Novel, With A Single Difference: Every Word Of It Would Be True From Beginning To End.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

I'm Not A Philosopher.

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

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

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

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

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

Great Fury, Like Great Whisky, Requires Long Fermentation.

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

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

Failure Is The Condiment That Gives Success Its Flavor.

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?

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

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.

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

The Better The Actor, The More Stupid He Is.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Breakfast At Tiffanys

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

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

I Despise People Who Can't Control Themselves.

Jay Sebring Cut My Hair A Couple Of Times.

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.

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.

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

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

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 Remember Things The Way They Should Have Been.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

I'm Sure Proust Was A Big Bore.

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

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

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

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

Pencil Sharpeners

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.

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.

My Yardstick Is How Somebody Treats Me.

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

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.

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

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.

A Boy Has To Peddle His Book.

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

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.

Think Of Nothing Things Think Of Wind

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

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.

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.

That's Not Writing, That's Typing

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.

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

One Day At A Time

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.

Dizzy With Excitement Is No Mere Phrase.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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 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.

...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.

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

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

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.

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!

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

Cannes Film Festival

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.

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

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

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

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.

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 Told You: You Can Make Yourself Love Anybody.

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