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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

More From Truman Capote

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

The Better The Actor, The More Stupid He Is.

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

June, July, All Through The Warm Months She Hibernated Like A Winter Animal Who Did Not Know Spring Had Come And Gone.

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.

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.

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.

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 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 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.

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

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

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

Breakfast At Tiffanys

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

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 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.

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 Feel That All A Writer Has Is His Own Experience.

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

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

Are The Dead As Lonesome As The Living?

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.

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.

Failure Is The Condiment That Gives Success Its Flavor.

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

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

I Dream Of Eagles And Bring Forth Sparrows.

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.

New York Is The Only Real City-city.

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

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.

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.

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

I Told You: You Can Make Yourself Love Anybody.

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.

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

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

...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.

...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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

You're Wonderful. Unique. I Love You.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

Breakfast At Tiffanys

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

Think Of Nothing Things Think Of Wind

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.

Traveling Wears Me Out.

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

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

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

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

Sicily Is More Beautiful Than Any Woman.

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.

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.

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

Good Writing Is Rewriting.

I've Never Worked For A Newspaper. I've Had Some Very Bad Reviews In Newspapers.

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.

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

Nowhere To Turn

Great Fury, Like Great Whisky, Requires Long Fermentation.

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.

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

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.

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

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'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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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 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.

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

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.

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

I'm Sure Proust Was A Big Bore.

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

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

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'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.

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.

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

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

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

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

I Remember Things The Way They Should Have Been.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

I Never Had A Rejection Slip In My Life.

That's Not Writing, That's Typing

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.

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

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.

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.

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

I'm Not A Philosopher.

All Artists Are Two-headed Calves.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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?

At One Time I Used To Keep Notebooks With Outlines For Stories. But I Found Doing This Somehow Deadened The Idea In My Imagination. If The Notion Is Good Enough, If It Truly Belongs To You, Then You Can't Forget It-it Will Haunt You Till It's Written.

I'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.

I've Never Been A Teacher In My Life.

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.

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

Love And Friendship

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.

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.

I Can See Every Monster As They Come In.

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.

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 Boy Has To Peddle His Book.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

[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.

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

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?

She Sounds The Way Bananas Taste.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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?

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

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

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.

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

A Beautiful Day With The Buoyancy Of A Bird.

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!

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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