Portraits and Observations Quotes

“she wanted to know what American writers I liked. "Hawthorne, Henry James, Emily Dickinson…" "No, living." Ah, well, hmm, let's see: how difficult, the rival factor being what it is, for a contemporary author, or would-be author, to confess admiration for another. At last I said, "Not Hemingway—a really dishonest man, the closet-everything. Not Thomas Wolfe—all that purple upchuck; of course, he isn't living. Faulkner, sometimes: Light in August. Fitzgerald, sometimes: Diamond as Big as the Ritz, Tender Is the Night. I really like Willa Cather. Have you read My Mortal Enemy?" With no particular expression, she said, "Actually, I wrote it.”
― Truman Capote, Portraits and Observations: The Essays of Truman Capote

“I prefer to underwrite. Simple, clear as a country creek.”
― Truman Capote, Portraits and Observations: The Essays of Truman Capote

“Коя е най-добрата дума за надежда във всички езици?
Любов.
А най-опасната?
Любов.”
― Truman Capote, Portraits and Observations: The Essays of Truman Capote

“If you walk a singular path, you always carry a certain grief.”
― Truman Capote, Portraits and Observations: The Essays of Truman Capote

“Само веднъж съм ходил при психиатър; предпочитам да се отправя на път със свален гюрук под вятъра и слънцето.”
― Truman Capote, Portraits and Observations: The Essays of Truman Capote

“And suppose you don’t like it? Excellent question; and, strangely, one I’d never asked myself, principally because I had chosen the ingredients, and I always have faith in my own judgment.”
― Truman Capote, Portraits and Observations

“Toward midafternoon, as the heat closed in like a hand over a murder victim’s mouth, the city thrashed and twisted, but with its outcry muffled, its hurry hampered, its ambitions hindered, it was like a dry fountain, some useless monument, and so sank into a coma. The steaming willow-limp stretches of Central Park were like a battlefield where many have fallen: rows of exhausted casualties lay crumpled in the dead-still shade, while newspaper photographers, documenting the disaster, moved sepulchrally among them. At night, hot weather opens the skull of a city, exposing its white brain and its central nerves, which sizzle like the inside of an electric-light bulb.”
― Truman Capote, Portraits and Observations

“Els gossos no em mosseguen mai. Només ho fan els homes.”
― Truman Capote, Retrats

“There is no brand of intolerance so tiresome as that which results in condemning characteristics you yourself possess.”
― Truman Capote, Portraits and Observations: The Essays of Truman Capote

“Unless one is in love, or satisfied, or ambition-driven, or without curiosity, or reconciled ( which appears to be the modern synonym for happiness ), the city is like a monumental machine restlessly devised for wasting time, devouring illusions.

Like most artists, certainly all old beauties, she is sufficiently self-centered to enjoy herself as conversational subject.

One does not travel in a plane; one is merely sent, like a parcel.”
― Truman Capote, Portraits and Observations: The Essays of Truman Capote

“Упражнявате ли някакъв спорт?
Да. Масаж.”
― Truman Capote, Portraits and Observations: The Essays of Truman Capote

“Какво ви плаши тогава?
Мисълта, че мога да загубя чувството си за хумор.”
― Truman Capote, Portraits and Observations: The Essays of Truman Capote

“Главната ми добродетел е благодарността. Няма случай да съм бил нелоялен към човек, който се е отнесъл добре с мен. Но тъй като животът ни предлага една компенсация за пропуснатите радости – изкуството, - запазвам благодарността си предимно за онези поети, живописци и композитори, които най-много са ме компенсирали. Произведението на изкуството е единствената загадка, единствената магия; всичко останало е аритметика или биология. Мисля, че доста разбирам от писане; въпреки това чета ли нещо, което да е хубаво – с други думи, произведение на изкуството, сетивата ми отплуват в дивна вселена. Как го е направил? Как е възможно?”
― Truman Capote, Portraits and Observations: The Essays of Truman Capote