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Some Cities, Like Wrapped Boxes Under Christmas Trees, Conceal Unexpected Gifts, Secret Delights. Some Cities Will Always Remain Wrapped Boxes, Containers Of Riddles Never To Be Solved, Nor Even To Be Seen By Vacationing Visitors, Or, For That Matter, The Most Inquisitive, Persistent Travelers.

-Truman Capote

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Some Cities, Like Wrapped

Truman Capote

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Some Cities, Like Wrapped Boxes Under Christmas Trees, Conceal Unexpected Gifts, Secret Delights. Some Cities Will Always Remain Wrapped Boxes, Containers Of Riddles Never To Be Solved, Nor Even To Be Seen By Vacationing Visitors, Or, For That Matter, The Most Inquisitive, Persistent Travelers.

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Unexpected Gifts

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All Literature Is Gossip.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Breakfast At Tiffanys

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

She Sounds The Way Bananas Taste.

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

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

Cannes Film Festival

Let's Take Everything Just As It Is.

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

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'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.

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.

...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.

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

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

Sicily Is More Beautiful Than Any Woman.

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.

I'm Sure Proust Was A Big Bore.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Some Cities, Like Wrapped Boxes Under Christmas Trees, Conceal Unexpected Gifts, Secret Delights. Some Cities Will Always Remain Wrapped Boxes, Containers Of Riddles Never To Be Solved, Nor Even To Be Seen By Vacationing Visitors, Or, For That Matter, The Most Inquisitive, Persistent Travelers.

Unexpected Gifts

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.

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.

Are The Dead As Lonesome As The Living?

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.

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Good Writing Is Rewriting.

I'm Scarcely An Enfant!

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

Jay Sebring Cut My Hair A Couple Of Times.

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.

It's Redundant To Die In Los Angeles.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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

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

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

A Beautiful Day With The Buoyancy Of A Bird.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Think Of Nothing Things Think Of Wind

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.

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

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

I Can See Every Monster As They Come In.

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 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.

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

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

I Think My Greatest Talent Really Is For Friendship.

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

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

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

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

One Day At A Time

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.

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 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.

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

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

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.

If You Happen To Capture My Imagination For Some Reason And I Decide To Write About You And You Don't Like What I Wrote About You, Which Is Entirely Possible, Then Yes, I'm A Dangerous Writer.

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

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

Great Fury, Like Great Whisky, Requires Long Fermentation.

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

There Was An American Girl, Priscilla Johnson. She Worked For U.p. In Moscow. She Knew [john] Kennedy, And She Met [lee Harvey] Oswald Around The Same Time I Did. But I Can Tell You Something Else Almost As Curious.

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

Most People Don't Find Their Creativity. There Are More Unsung Geniuses That Don't Even Know They Have Great Talent.

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'm Not A Philosopher.

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.

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

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

The 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!

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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 Know The Next Best Thing Is Often The Very Best.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

I Despise People Who Can't Control Themselves.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

All Artists Are Two-headed Calves.

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.

...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.

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

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

Norman Mailer Thinks William Burroughs Is A Genius, Which I Think Is Ludicrous Beyond Words. I Don't Think William Burroughs Has An Ounce Of Talent.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

Breakfast At Tiffanys

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.

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

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

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

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

Nowhere To Turn

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

I've Never Been A Teacher In My Life.

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

Pencil Sharpeners

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

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

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

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

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

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.

[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.

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

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

A Boy Has To Peddle His Book.

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.

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

Love And Friendship

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.

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.

The Brain May Take Advice, But Not The Heart.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

Gasping For Breath, The Body Still Battling For Life.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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

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

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

Failure Is The Condiment That Gives Success Its Flavor.

That's Not Writing, That's Typing

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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Barbara Taylor Bradford

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