Quotes from Truman Capote

That's not writing, that's typing.

Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

A man who doesn't dream is like a man who doesn't sweat. He stores up a lot of poison.

Have you never heard what the wise men say: all of the future exists in the past.

I have an extremely strong, masculine mind and a feminine sensibility level, which is kind of an unusual combination. Both men and women tell me things and I can relate on two levels simultaneously.

The only rich women who ever interested me, the ones who were ever my friends, were adventuresses---people who were total self-creations.

Love, having no geography, knows no boundaries: weight and sink it deep, no matter, it will rise and find the surface.

Any work of art, provided it springs from a sincere motivation to further understanding between people, is an act of faith and therefore is an act of love.

If you can't be friends with a lover, then forget it. It's not going to work.

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.

Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

Aprils have never meant much to me, autumns seem that season of beginning, spring.

It was a face beyond childhood, yet this side of belonging to a woman. I thought her anywhere between sixteen and thirty; as it turned out, she was shy two months of her nineteenth birthday.

It may be normal, darling; but I'd rather be natural.

I didn't want to harm the man. I thought he was a very nice gentleman. Soft-spoken. I thought so right up to the moment I cut his throat.

You know those days when you've got the mean reds.... the blues are because you're getting fat or maybe it's been raining too long. You're sad, that's all. But the mean reds are horrible. You're afraid and you sweat like hell, but you don't know what you're afraid of. Except something bad is going to happen, only you don't know what it is.

But I'm not a saint yet. I'm an alcoholic. I'm a drug addict. I'm homosexual. I'm a genius.

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.

I don't want to own anything until I know I've found the place where me and things belong together. I'm not quite sure where that is just yet. But I know what it's like.... It's like Tiffany's.... Not that I give a hoot about jewelry. Diamonds, yes. But it's tacky to wear diamonds before you're forty...

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

The good thing about masturbation is that you don't have to get dressed up for it.

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.

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

To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the inner music the words make.