In Cold Blood

by Truman Capote

You exist in a half-world suspended between two superstructures, one self-expression and the other self-destruction.

“Of all the people in all the world, the Clutters were the least likely to be murdered.”

High school superlative: Least Likely to be Murdered.

“This old girl, she’s sleeping good as ever. Anybody wants to play a trick on me, let ’em try.” (Eleven months later a gun-toting team of masked bandits took her at her word by invading the post office and relieving the lady of nine hundred and fifty dollars.)

Lmao

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

It is easy to ignore the rain if you have a raincoat.

and he was smoking sixty cigarettes a day.

Good God

Duntz asks Smith, “Added up, how much money did you get from the Clutters?” “Between forty and fifty dollars.”

Terrorized and killed a whole family for $40.

The cats, for example: the two thin gray toms who appeared with every twilight and prowled the Square, stopping to examine the cars parked around its periphery—behavior puzzling to him until Mrs. Meier explained that the cats were hunting for dead birds caught in the vehicles’ engine grilles. Thereafter it pained him to watch their maneuvers: “Because most of my life I’ve done what they’re doing. The equivalent.”

Here comes Smith.” “Gosh, I didn’t know he was such a shrimp.” “Yeah, he’s little. But so is a tarantula.”