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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.

-Truman Capote

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But There Were Moments

Truman Capote

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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.

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

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.

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 Also Write The Last Paragraph Or Page Of A Story First. That Way I Always Know What I'm Working Towards.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

Pencil Sharpeners

Great Fury, Like Great Whisky, Requires Long Fermentation.

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

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

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

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.

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'm Not A Character In Any Of My Books.

Talent Is A Valued Tormentor.

...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.

A Boy Has To Peddle His Book.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

She Sounds The Way Bananas Taste.

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

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

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

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 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.

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

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

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

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.

Think Of Nothing Things Think Of Wind

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Are The Dead As Lonesome As The Living?

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

All Artists Are Two-headed Calves.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Nowhere To Turn

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.

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

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 Met Lee Harvey Oswald, In Moscow Just After He Defected. One Night I Was Having Dinner With A Friend, An Italian Newspaper Correspondent, And When He Came By To Pick Me Up He Asked Me If I'd Mind Going With Him First To Talk To A Young American Defector, One Lee Harvey Oswald. Oswald Was Staying At The Metropole, An Old Czarist Hotel Just Off Kremlin Square.

I'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

[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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Failure Is The Condiment That Gives Success Its Flavor.

The Better The Actor, The More Stupid He Is.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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'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.

Sicily Is More Beautiful Than Any Woman.

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?

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

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.

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

Breakfast At Tiffanys

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

I Can See Every Monster As They Come In.

Good Writing Is Rewriting.

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

To Wake Up One Morning And Feel That I Was A Last A Grown-up Person, Emptied Of Resentment, Vengeful Thoughts And Other Wasteful Childish Emotions. To Find Myself, In Other Words, An Adult. Truman Capote

I'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.

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

...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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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 Redundant To Die In Los Angeles.

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 Knew Lee Harvey Oswald, And I Knew Jack Kennedy. The Odds Against That-one Person Knowing All Four Of Those Men-must Be Astounding.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

Dizzy With Excitement Is No Mere Phrase.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

The Brain May Take Advice, But Not The Heart, 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 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.

Let's Take Everything Just As It Is.

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

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

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.

The Brain May Take Advice, But Not The Heart.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

New York Is The Only Real City-city.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

You Don't Understand. You've Never Hated Anybody. No, I Never Have. We're Allotted Just So Much Time On Earth, And I Wouldn't Want The Lord To See Me Wasting Mine In Any Such Manner.

I 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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Jay Sebring Cut My Hair A Couple Of Times.

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!

I'm Scarcely An Enfant!

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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 Despise People Who Can't Control Themselves.

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.

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.

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

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

Gasping For Breath, The Body Still Battling For Life.

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