Quotes from Truman Capote

Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act.

A conversation is a dialogue, not a monologue. That's why there are so few good conversations: due to scarcity, two intelligent talkers seldom meet.

It was a terrible, strange-looking hotel. But Little Sunshine stayed on: it was his rightful home, he said, for if he went away, as he had once upon a time, other voices, other rooms, voices lost and clouded, strummed his dreams.

The answer is good things only happen to you if you're good. Good? Honest is more what I mean... Be anything but a coward, a pretender, an emotional crook, a whore: I'd rather have cancer than a dishonest heart.

Anyone who ever gave you confidence, you owe them a lot.

Now Second Avenue is a dismal street, made from scraps and ends; part cobblestone, part asphalt, part cement; and its atmosphere of desertion is permanent.

Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.

Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the back yard and shot it.

The true beloveds of this world are in their lover's eyes lilacs opening, ship lights, school bells, a landscape, remembered conversations, friends, a child's Sunday, lost voices, one's favorite suit, autumn and all seasons, memory, yes, it being the earth and water of existence, memory.

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

All artists are two-headed calves.

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 the art of solving a mystery.

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.

Work is the only device I know of.

The only obligation any artist can have is to himself. His work means nothing, otherwise. It has no meaning.

She was a triumph over ugliness, so often more beguiling than real beauty, if only because it contains paradox.

I know the next best thing is often the very best.

Anyone who ever gave you confidence, you owe them a lot.

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

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.

A work of art is one of mystery, the one extreme magic; everything else is either arithmetic or biology.

I feel that all a writer has is his own experience.

My father was quite an attractive guy. He was very intelligent and very amusing. I didn't like him. He was always very nice to me but I just didn't like him.

It's a scientific fact that if you stay in California you lose one point of your IQ every year