Truman Capote Quotes - Page 2

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.
Truman Capote
Imagination, of course, can open any door - turn the key and let terror walk right in.
Truman Capote
When he was in the army he'd picked up a great many girls: sometimes nothing happened except a lot of talk, and that was all right too: because it didn't matter what you said to them, for in those transient moments lies or truth were arbitrary and you were whatever you wanted to be.
Truman Capote
Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavour.
Truman Capote
I know it's become fashionable to depict the police as sadistic Cossacks riding down innocent citizens, but I've become well enough acquainted with law-enforcement agencies across the country to know that's just not the case. Of course, a certain small percentage of policemen are irresponsible...but that doesn't justify the current unjust barrage of propaganda against a tribe of men who are hard-working, underpaid and daily risking their lives to protect us. I'm sure there are isolated instances of police brutality, but the rising crime rate and urban violence constitute a far, far more pressing problem.
Truman Capote
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 art is the act of solving a mystery.
Truman Capote
That isn't writing at all, it's typing.
Truman Capote
It's a very excruciating life facing that blank piece of paper every day and having to reach up somewhere into the clouds and bring something down out of them.
Truman Capote
I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil.
Truman Capote
Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the back yard and shot it.
Truman Capote
You can't blame a writer for what the characters say.
Truman Capote
To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the music the words make.
Truman Capote
Once a thing is set to happen, all you can do is hope it won't. Or will-depending. 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.
Truman Capote
You cold or something?' he said. She strained against him; she wanted to pass clear through him: 'It's a chill, it's nothing'; and then, pushing a little away: 'Say you love me.'I said it.'No, oh no. You haven't. I was listening. And you never do.'Well, give me time.'Please.'He sat up and glanced at a clock across the room. It was after five. Then decisively he pulled off his windbreaker and began to unlace his shoes.Aren't you going to, Clyde?'He grinned back at her. 'Yeah, I'm going to.'I don't mean that; and what's more, I don't like it: you sound as though you were talking to a whore.'Come off it, honey. You didn't drag me up here to tell you about love.'You disgust me,' she said.Listen to her! She's sore!'A silence followed that circulated like an aggrieved bird. Clyde said, 'You want to hit me, huh? I kind of like you when you're sore: that's the kind of girl you are,' which made Grady light in his arms when he lifted and kissed her. 'You still want me to say it?' Her head slumped on his shoulder. 'Because I will,' he said, fooling his fingers in her hair. 'Take off your clothes--and I'll tell it to you good.
Truman Capote
Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.
Truman Capote
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.
Truman Capote
The blame of course belonged to Clyde, who just was not much given to talk. Also, he seemed very little curious himself: Grady, alarmed sometimes by the meagerness of his inquiries and the indifference this might suggest, supplied him liberally with personal information; which isn't to say she always told the truth, how many people in love do? or can? but at least she permitted him enough truth to account more or less accurately for all the life she had lived away from him. It was her feeling, however, that he would as soon not hear her confessions: he seemed to want her to be as elusive, as secretive as he was himself.
Truman Capote
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.
Truman Capote
Well, I'm about as tall as a shotgun, and just as noisy.
Truman Capote
Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act.
Truman Capote
He loved her, he loved her, and until he'd loved her she had never minded being alone....
Truman Capote
You can love somebody without it being like that. You keep them a stranger, a stranger who's a friend.
Truman Capote
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.""She's drunk," Joe Bell informed me. "Moderately," Holly confessed....Holly lifted her martini. "Let's wish the Doc luck, too," she said, touching her glass against mine. "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.
Truman Capote