Breakfast at Tiffany's and Three Stories: House of Flowers, A Diamond Guitar, and A Christmas Memory

by Truman Capote

He was a middle-aged child that had never shed its baby fat, though some gifted tailor had almost succeeded in camouflaging his plump and spankable bottom.

Though he’d been a bachelor since, apparently before the war he’d proposed to Unity Mitford, at least he was supposed to have sent her a cable offering to marry her if Hitler didn’t. This was said to be the reason Winchell always referred to him as a Nazi; that, and the fact that he attended rallies in Yorkville.

I knew damn well I’d never be a movie star. It’s too hard; and if you’re intelligent, it’s too embarrassing.

“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 spent whole hausfrau afternoons slopping about in the sweatbox of her midget kitchen: “José says I’m better than the Colony. Really, who would have dreamed I had such a great natural talent? A month ago I couldn’t scramble eggs.” And still couldn’t, for that matter.

Eleven. Does that make me a whore? Look at Mag Wildwood. Or Honey Tucker. Or Rose Ellen Ward. They’ve had the old clap-yo’-hands so many times it amounts to applause.

The instant she saw the letter she squinted her eyes and bent her lips in a tough tiny smile that advanced her age immeasurably. “Darling,” she instructed me, “would you reach in the drawer there and give me my purse. A girl doesn’t read this sort of thing without her lipstick.”

Uh, uh, I don’t just fancy a fade-out that finds me belly-bumping around Roseland with a pack of West Side hillbillies. While the excellent Madame Trawler sashays her twat in and out of Tiffany’s.