Conversations With Capote Quotes

“There's something really the matter with most people who wear tattoos. There's at least some terrible story. I know from experience that there's always something terribly flawed about people who are tattooed, above some little something that Johnny had done in the Navy, even though that's a bad sign...It's terrible. Psychologically it's crazy. Most people who are tattooed, it's the sign of some feeling of inferiority, they're trying to establish some macho identification for themselves.”
― Truman Capote, Conversations with Capote

“It's a very excruciating life facing that blank piece of paper every day and having to reach up somewhere into the clouds and bring something down out of them.”
― Truman Capote, Conversations with Capote

“Thackeray's a good writer and Flaubert is a great artist. Trollope is a good writer and Dickens is a great artist. Colette is a very good writer and Proust is a great artist. Katherine Anne Porter was an extremely good writer and Willa Cather was a great artist.”
― Truman Capote, Conversations with Capote

“All writing, all art, is an act of faith. If one tries to contribute to human understanding, how can that be called decadent? It’s like saying a declaration of love is an act of decadence. Any work of art, provide it springs from a sincere motivation to further understanding between people, is an act of faith and therefore is an act of love.”
― Truman Capote, Conversations With Capote

“Flannery O'Connor had a certain genius. I don't think John Updike has, or Norman Mailer or William Styron, all of whom are talented, but they don't exceed themselves in any way. Norman Mailer thinks William Burroughs is a genius, which I think is ludicrous beyond words. I don't think William Burroughs has an ounce of talent.”
― Truman Capote, Conversations with Capote

“Hack, hack, hack. I wouldn't pay twenty-five cents to spit on a Georgia O'Keeffe painting. And I think she's a horrible person, too. I know her...So arrogant, so sure of herself. I'm sure she's carrying a dildo in her purse.”
― Truman Capote, Conversations with Capote

“Some of the most vivid writing in America is on the walls of restrooms. The men's room in the Albany, N.Y. railroad station, for instance, should be preserved as a national shrine: there is more wit there than in any Broadway hit!”
― Truman Capote, Conversations With Capote

“I thought Lord of the Flies was one of the great rip-offs of our time. Complete steal from A High Wind In Jamaica. He just literally lifted the entire theme, plot, and virtually characterization from A High Wind In Jamaica, turned them into a bunch of small boys and placed it on an island. Otherwise it's precisely the same novel.”
― Truman Capote, Conversations with Capote

“I knew Faulkner very well. He was a great friend of mine. Well, as much as you could be a friend of his, unless you were a fourteen-year-old nymphet. Then you could be a great friend!”
― Truman Capote, Conversations with Capote

“Oscar Wilde is one of the people that I would have most liked to know. I'm sure I would have liked him a lot.”
― Truman Capote, Conversations With Capote

“Everybody has their field. My field is the multiple murderer.”
― Lawrence Grobel, Conversations With Capote

“If you can't be friends with a lover, then forget it. It's not going to work.”
― Lawrence Grobel, Conversations With Capote