Truman Capote Quotes

“Nancy clutter is always in a hurry, but she always has time. And that is the definition of a lady.”
― Truman Capote

“...he called after her as she
disappeared down the path, a pretty girl in a hurry...”
― Truman Capote, In Cold Blood

“James Agee. He was born a prince of the language, and so he remains. And Capote. I don't care what kind of stupid ass remarks he makes, he can write; he really can. When he's on he's really on. Updike would be twice the writer he is if he weren't such a hot dog. God knows, he's a word man. Eudora Welty, great writer. Erskine Caldwell, by the way is a helluva lot better than he's ever been given credit for. But if you ask me, "Who's your favorite writer?" there's no answer to that. That's like saying, "What do you like best for breakfast?" Some mornings you want a beer; some mornings you want strawberries; some mornings you want, God help us, Frostie Crispie Flakes with a lot of sugar, and some mornings you want your old lady.”
― Harry Crews, Getting Naked with Harry Crews: Interviews

“The police said for Oreilly to get to his feet.

"Certainly," Oreilly said, "though I do think it shocking you have to trouble yourself with such petty crimes as mine when everywhere there are master thieves afoot.

"For instance, this pretty child," he stepped between the officers and pointed at Sylvia, "she is the recent victim of a major theft; poor baby, she has had her soul stolen.”
― Truman Capote, The Grass Harp, Including A Tree of Night and Other Stories

“I am always drawn back to places where I have lived, the houses and their neighborhoods. For instance, there is a brownstone in the East Seventies where, during the early years of the war, I had my first New York apartment.”
― Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany's

“Si pudiera, Buddy. La vida ya es bastante mala cuando tienes que prescindir de las cosas que te gustan a ti; pero, diablos, lo que más me enfurece es no poder regalar aquello que les gusta a los otros. Pero cualquier día te la consigo, Buddy.

Tres cuentos, Truman Capote”
― Truman Capote

“He would’ve sworn the woman was a reincarnation of Holly Golightly, but this wasn’t a Capote novel, no matter her resemblance to Hepburn.”
― Kelly Moran, Bewitched

“Have you ever noticed a certain type of man who always wants to go along with his wife to pick out her clothes? I've always thought that's because he wants to wear them himself.

Truman Capote on Warhol”
― Jean Stein, Edie: American Girl

“[Truman Capote] should be heard, not read.”
― Gore Vidal

“Even if you get away with it, you'll never be able to come home."
"Well, so, tough titty. Anyway, home is where you feel at home. I'm still looking.”
― Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany's

“So I still like to see you, my friend. I still like to sit in La Côte Basque and sip wine and eat fine food and indulge in our memories—the good ones, the ones we want to remember. So let’s do that. That’s the story we can tell ourselves, at night when we can’t sleep. We can tell ourselves that there is one other person in the world who sees it in the same way, who remembers. Who remembers her. Babe. And Gloria. And even Truman, I guess, as he was, back then. Our fun, gossipy friend. Our entrée into a different world, for a time. An amusing, brief little time. A time before it was fashionable to tell the truth, and the world grew sordid from too much honesty.”
― Melanie Benjamin, The Swans of Fifth Avenue

“Truman Capote said that he learned how to write a story not from reading but from sitting on his aunts' front porch in Alabama and listening to them tell stories. This was my earliest education in the art of storytelling too.”
― Ann Hood, Morningstar: Growing Up with Books

“(July 29, 1949 letter to Truman Capote, in Tangiers, Morocco)

You have probably never received those delicious epistles which I never wrote—let alone sent. But there you are selling grain in the marketplace with little Jane [Bowles]—and now both of you adored by Berbers and strange wide-eyed men such as have never adored me. When are you coming home to your sweet old bald-head mom?”
― Leo Lerman, The Grand Surprise: The Journals of Leo Lerman

“I hear ding her neglectials to smilined,
- there is a brownstone in the East Seventies where, during the early years of the war, I had my first New York apartment. It was one room crowded with attic fur-niture, a sofa and fat chairs upholstered in that itchy, particular red velvet that one associates with hot days on a train. The walls were stucco, and a color rather like tobacco-spit. Everywhere, in the bathroom too, there were prints of Roman ruins freckled brown with age.
The single window looked out on a fire escape. Even so, my spirits heightened whenever I felt in my pocket the key to this apartment; with all its gloom, it still was a place of my own, the first, and my books were there, and jars of pencils to sharpen, everything I needed, so I felt, to become the writer I wanted to be.”
― Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany's