Truman Capote Quotes

New York is a diamond iceberg floating in river water.

Duntz asked Smith, 'Added up, how much money did you get from the Cutters?' 'Between forty and fifty dollars.

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

The average personality re-shapes frequently, every few years even our bodies undergo a complete overhaul-desirable or not, it is a natural thing that we should change.

Any love is natural and beautiful that lies within a person’s nature; only hypocrites would hold a man responsible for what he loves, emotional illiterates and those of righteous envy, who, in their agitated concern, mistake so frequently the arrow pointing to heaven for the one that leads to hell.

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

I think the argument that no whites are free of racism is quite erroneous. But then, on another level, does it really matter if anybody is free of any negative feeling about anything? No matter how much you love somebody, you know, there's some part of him you don't like.

I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil.

Imagination, of course, can open any door - turn the key and let terror walk right in.

It was as if I were an oyster and somebody forced a grain of sand into my shell -- a grain of sand that I didn't know was there and didn't particularly welcome. Then a pearl started forming around the grain and it irritated me, made me angry, tortured me sometimes. But the oyster can't help becoming obsessed with the pearl.

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

That's not writing that's typing.

A very fine artist can take something quite ordinary and, through sheer artistry and willpower, turn it into a work of art.

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.

And in this moment, like a swift intake of breath, the rain came.

Royal summoned mourners. They came from the village, from the neighboring hills and, wailing like dogs at midnight, laid siege to the house. Old women beat their heads against the walls, moaning men prostrated themselves: it was the art of sorrow, and those who best mimicked grief were much admired. After the funeral everyone went away, satisfied that they'd done a good job.

All children are morbid: it's their one saving grace.

Like the waters of the river, like the motorists on the highway, and like the yellow trains streaking down the Santa Fe tracks, drama, in the shape of exceptional happenings, had never stopped there.