quotes by Truman Capote

"Fiction is the truth inside the lie."
— Truman Capote

"More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones."
— Truman Capote

"The wind is us-- it gathers and remembers all our voices, then sends them talking and telling through the leaves and the fields."
— Truman Capote

"There are certain shades of limelight that can wreck a girl's complexion."
— Truman Capote

""Young men think old men are fools; but old men know young men are fools."
"
— Truman Capote

"All literature is gossip"
— Truman Capote

""Did you ever, in that wonderland wilderness of adolesence [sic] ever, quite unexpectedly, see something, a dusk sky, a wild bird, a landscape, so exquisite terror touched you at the bone? And you are afraid, terribly afraid the smallest movement, a leaf, say, turning in the wind, will shatter all? That is, I think, the way love is, or should be: one lives in beautiful terror.""
— Truman Capote

"Love, having no geography, knows no boundaries.
"
— Truman Capote

"But I'm not a saint yet. I'm an alcoholic. I'm a drug addict. I'm homosexual. I'm a genius."
— Truman Capote

"Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor."
— Truman Capote

"think of nothing things
think of wind"
— Truman Capote

"She was still hugging the cat. "Poor slob," she said, tickling his head, "poor slob without a name. It's a little inconvenient, his not having a name. But I haven't any right to give him one: he'll have to wait until he belongs to somebody. We just sort of took up by the river one day, we don't belong to each other: he's an independent, and so am I. 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." She smiled, and let the cat drop to the floor. "It's like Tiffany's," she said.

[...]

It calms me down right away, the quietness and the proud look of it; nothing very bad could happen to you there, not with those kind men in their nice suits, and that lovely smell of silver and alligator wallets. If I could find a real-life place that made me feel like Tiffany's, then I'd buy some furniture and give the cat a name."
— Truman Capote (Breakfast at Tiffany's)

"But we are alone, darling child, terribly, isolated each from the other; so fierce is the world's ridicule we cannot speak or show our tenderness; for us, death is stronger than life, it pulls like a wind through the dark, all our cries burlesqued in joyless laughter; and with the garbage of loneliness stuffed down us until our guts burst bleeding green, we go screaming round the world, dying in our rented rooms, nightmare hotels, eternal homes of the transient heart."
— Truman Capote (Other Voices, Other Rooms (Vintage International))

""would you reach in the drawer there and give me my purse. A girl doesn't read this sort of thing without her lipstick.""
— Truman Capote (Breakfast at Tiffany's: A Short Novel and Three Stories (Modern Library))

"Well, I'm about as tall as a shotgun, and just as noisy."
— Truman Capote

"A beautiful day with the buoyancy of a bird."
— Truman Capote

"There were hints of sunrise on the rim of the sky, yet it was still dark, and the traces of morning color were like goldfish swimming in ink."
— Truman Capote (The Muses Are Heard, an Account.)

"He’d always been willing to confess his faults, for, by admitting them, it was as if he made them no longer exist."
— Truman Capote (The Complete Stories of Truman Capote (Vintage International))

"I know the next best thing is often the very best."
— Truman Capote

"It may be normal, darling; but I'd rather be natural."
— Truman Capote