Truman Capote Quotes - Page 6

I like to talk on TV about those things that aren't worth writing about.

I haven't anything against whores, except this: some of them may have an honest tongue but they all have dishonest hearts.

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.

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.

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 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.

Still, when all is said, somewhere one must belong: even the soaring falcon returns to its master's wrist.

You can love somebody without it being like that. You keep them a stranger, a stranger who's a friend.

I'm sure Proust was a big bore.

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.

I think of myself as a stylist, and stylists can become notoriously obsessed with the placing of a comma, the weight of a semicolon.

Anyone who ever gave you confidence, you owe them a lot". ~Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany's, 1958, spoken by the character Holly Golightly

When God hands you a gift, he also hands you a whip; and the whip is intended for self-flagellation solely.

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.

It should take you about four seconds to walk from here to the door. I'll give you two.

Half the people who snuff people, that's what they want: recognition. Get their picture in the paper.

Traveling wears me out.

Every day is a new day with me. All holds are off. All contracts are forgotten.

Venice is like eating an entire box of chocolate liqueurs in one go.

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.

There is no shame — having a dirty face — the shame comes when you keep it dirty.

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.

That's not writing, that's typing

[T]he army of wrongness rampant in the world might as well march over me.

New York is the only real city-city.