Truman Capote Quotes - Page 8

The way his plump hand clutched at her hip seemed somehow improper; not morally, aesthetically.

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 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.

She is pure Alice in Wonderland, and her appearance and demeanor are a nicely judged mix of the Red Queen and a Flamingo.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Wrinkles and bones, white hair and diamonds: I can't wait.

Dizzy with excitement is no mere phrase.

I also write the last paragraph or page of a story first. That way I always know what I'm working towards.

All artists are two-headed calves.

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.

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.

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 don't think I've ever drunk champagne before breakfast before. With breakfast on several occasions, but never before before.

Don't wanna sleep, don't wanna die, just wanna go a-travellin' through the pastures of 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.

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.

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.

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 think my greatest talent really is for friendship.

I loved her enough to forget myself, my self pitying despairs, and be content that something she thought happy was going to happen.

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'm one of the world's greatest pencil sharpeners.