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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.

-Truman Capote

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Those Final Weeks, Spanning

Truman Capote

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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.

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

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

But I'm Not A Saint Yet. I'm An Alcoholic. I'm A Drug Addict. I'm Homosexual. I'm A Genius.

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

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

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

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

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

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One Day At A Time

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Many Universities Have Asked Me To Come For A Semester But I Don't Want To Do It Because I Don't Have The Patience.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Great Fury, Like Great Whisky, Requires Long Fermentation.

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

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

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

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

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.

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