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

by Truman Capote

she was in this city I’d have seen her. You take a man that likes to walk, a man like me, a man’s been walking in the streets going on ten or twelve years, and all those years he’s got his eye out for one person, and nobody’s ever her, don’t it stand to reason she’s not there? I see pieces of her all the time, a

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

Very few authors, especially the unpublished, can resist an invitation to read aloud.

dykes are wonderful homemakers,

There’re so few things men can talk about. If a man doesn’t like baseball, then he must like horses, and if he doesn’t like either of them, well, I’m in trouble anyway: he don’t like girls. And

I want to still be me when I wake up one fine morning and have breakfast at Tiffany’s.

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.

Diamonds, yes. But it’s tacky to wear diamonds before you’re forty; and even that’s risky. They only look right on the really old girls.

“No, 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. You’ve had that feeling?”

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. I’ve

“You know what’s going to happen to you?” she said, with no hint of a stutter. “I’m going to march you over to the zoo and feed you to the yak.”

the average personality reshapes frequently, every few years even our bodies undergo a complete overhaul—desirable or not, it is a natural thing that we should change.

They would never change because they’d been given their character too soon; which, like sudden riches, leads to a lack of proportion:

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.”

“Good luck: and believe me, dearest Doc—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.”

She became rather careless about her clothes: used to rush round to the delicatessen wearing a rain-slicker and nothing underneath.

Which is fine by me: what could be prettier than a quite coony baby with bright green beautiful eyes?

course I haven’t anything against whores. Except this: some of them may have an honest tongue but they all have dishonest hearts. I mean, you can’t bang the guy and cash his checks and at least not try to believe you love him. I never have.

According to my census, he’s strictly a citizen of Limboville. It’s

“I’m very scared, Buster. Yes, at last. Because it could go on forever. Not knowing what’s yours until you’ve thrown it away.