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Truman Capote

Truman Capote Books

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In Cold Blood

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The Grass Harp

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Summer Crossing

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Answered Prayes

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One Christmas

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Retrats

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“But if Miss Golightly remained unconscious of my existence, except as a doorbell convenience, I became, through the summer, rather an authority on hers. I discovered, from observing the trash-basket outside her door, that her regular reading consisted of tabloids and travel folders and astrological charts; that she smoked an esoteric cigarette called Picayunes; survived on cottage cheese and Melba Toast; that her vari-colored hair was somewhat self-induced. The same source made it evident that she received V-letters by the bale. They were torn into strips like bookmarks. I used occasionally to pluck myself a bookmark in passing. Remember and miss you and rain and please write and damn and goddamn were the words that recurred most often on these slips; those, and lonesome and love.”

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Book:Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Three Stories
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“Somewhere in this world there exists an exceptional philosopher named Florie Rotondo. The other day I came across one of her ruminations printed in a magazine devoted to the writings of schoolchildren. It said: “If I could do anything, I would go to the middle of our planet, Earth, and seek uranium, rubies, and gold. I'd look for Unspoiled Monsters. Then I'd move to the country. --Florie Rotondo, age 8.” Florie, honey, I know just what you mean – even if you don’t: how could you, age eight?”

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Book:Answered Prayers
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“Watching her, I remembered a girl I'd known in school, a grind, Mildred Grossman. Mildred: with her moist hair and greasy spectacles, her strained fingers that dissected frogs and carried coffee to picket lines, her flat eyes that only turned toward the stars to estimate their chemical tonnage. Earth and air could not be more opposite than Mildred and Holly, yet in my head they acquired a Siamese twinship, and the thread of thought that had sewn them together ran like this: 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. All right, here were two people who never would. That is what Mildred Grossman had in common with Holly Golightly. They would never change because they'd been given their character too soon; which, like sudden riches, leads to a lack of proportion: the one had splurged herself into a top-heavy realist, the other a lopsided romantic. I imagined them in a restaurant of the future, Mildred still studying the menu for its nutritional values, Holly still gluttonous for everything on it. It would never be different. They would walk through life and out of it with the same determined step that took small notice of those cliffs at the left.”

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Book:Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Three Stories
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“I don't want you to think me as a heathen, Mr C; I've had enough experience to know that there is a God and that there is a Devil. But the way to tame the Devil is not to go down there to church and listen to what a sinful mean fool he is. No, love the Devil like you love Jesus; because he is a powerful man, and will do you a good turn if he knows you trust him.”

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Book:Children On Their Birthdays
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“She was still hugging the cat. "Poor slob," she said, tickling his head, "poor slob without a name. It's a little inconvenient, his not having a name. 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. I'm not quite sure where that is just yet. But I know what it's like." She smiled, and let the cat drop to the floor. "It's like Tiffany's," she said. [...] It calms me down right away, the quietness and the proud look of it; nothing very bad could happen to you there, not with those kind men in their nice suits, and that lovely smell of silver and alligator wallets. 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.”

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Book:Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Three Stories
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“The blame of course belonged to Clyde, who just was not much given to talk. Also, he seemed very little curious himself: Grady, alarmed sometimes by the meagerness of his inquiries and the indifference this might suggest, supplied him liberally with personal information; which isn't to say she always told the truth, how many people in love do? or can? but at least she permitted him enough truth to account more or less accurately for all the life she had lived away from him. It was her feeling, however, that he would as soon not hear her confessions: he seemed to want her to be as elusive, as secretive as he was himself.”

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Book:Summer Crossing
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“...the last thing I remembered was the peaceful voice of the Lord telling me something I must do. And the next day I did it. I went with Sook to the post office and bought a penny postcard. That same postcard exists today. It was found in my father's safety deposit box when he died last year. Here is what I had written him: Hello pop hope you are well I am and I am lurning to pedel my plain so fast I will soon be in the sky so keep your eyes open and yes I love you Buddy.”

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Book:One Christmas
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“You cold or something?' he said. She strained against him; she wanted to pass clear through him: 'It's a chill, it's nothing'; and then, pushing a little away: 'Say you love me.' I said it.' No, oh no. You haven't. I was listening. And you never do.' Well, give me time.' Please.' He sat up and glanced at a clock across the room. It was after five. Then decisively he pulled off his windbreaker and began to unlace his shoes. Aren't you going to, Clyde?' He grinned back at her. 'Yeah, I'm going to.' I don't mean that; and what's more, I don't like it: you sound as though you were talking to a whore.' Come off it, honey. You didn't drag me up here to tell you about love.' You disgust me,' she said. Listen to her! She's sore!' A silence followed that circulated like an aggrieved bird. Clyde said, 'You want to hit me, huh? I kind of like you when you're sore: that's the kind of girl you are,' which made Grady light in his arms when he lifted and kissed her. 'You still want me to say it?' Her head slumped on his shoulder. 'Because I will,' he said, fooling his fingers in her hair. 'Take off your clothes--and I'll tell it to you good.”

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Book:Summer Crossing
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“Royal summoned mourners. They came from the village, from the neighboring hills and, wailing like dogs at midnight, laid siege to the house. Old women beat their heads against the walls, moaning men prostrated themselves: it was the art of sorrow, and those who best mimicked grief were much admired. After the funeral everyone went away, satisfied that they'd done a good job.”

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Book:House of Flowers
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“Kay yawned and rested her forehead against the windowpane, her fingers idly strumming the guitar: the strings sang a hollow, lulling tune, as monotonously soothing as the Southern landscape, smudged in darkness, flowing past the window. An icy winter moon rolled above the train across the night sky like a thin white wheel.”

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Book:The Grass Harp, Including A Tree of Night and Other Stories
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“Sorrow and profound fatigue are at the heart of Dewey's silence. It had been his ambition to learn "exactly what happened in that house that night." Twice now he'd been told, and the two versions were very much alike, the only serious discrepancy being that Hickock attributed all four deaths to Smith, while Smith contended that Hickock had killed the two women. But the confessions, though they answered questions of how and why, failed to satisfy his sense of meaningful design. The crime was a psychological accident, virtually an impersonal act; the victims might as well have been killed by lightning. Except for one thing: they had experienced prolonged terror, they had suffered. And Dewey could not forget their sufferings. Nonetheless, he found it possible to look at the man beside him without anger - with, rather, a measure of sympathy - for Perry Smith's life had been no bed of roses but pitiful, an ugly and lonely progress toward one mirage and then another. Dewey's sympathy, however, was not deep enough to accommodate either forgiveness or mercy. He hoped to see Perry and his partner hanged - hanged back to back.”

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Book:In Cold Blood
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“Y permaneció allí, susurrando los nombres de las estrellas a medida que iban abriendo sus flores en lo alto del cielo. Le gustaban mucho las estrellas, pero aquella noche no le sirvieron de consuelo; no bastaron para recordarle que lo que nos ocurre a los que vivimos en la tierra carece de importancia contemplado desde el eterno fulgor de la eternidad. Mirándolas, volvió a pensar en la guitarra tachonada de brillantes, en su relumbrón mundano.”

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Book:A Diamond Guitar
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“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.”

Henry JamesErnest HemingwayEmily DickinsonTender Is The NightF Scott FitzgeraldWilliam FaulknerThomas WolfeWilla CatherNathaniel HawthorneLight In AugustDiamond As Big As The Ritz
Book:Portraits and Observations: The Essays of Truman Capote
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“There have been several intellectual lesbians of physical distinction: Collette, Gertrude Stein, Willa Cather, Ivy Compton-Burnett, Carson McCullers, Jane Bowles; and, in altogether another category, simple endearing prettiness, both Eleanor Clark and Katherine Anne Porter deserve their reputations. But Alice Lee Langman was a perfected presence, an enameled lady marked with the androgynous quality, that sexually ambivalent aura that seems a common denominator among certain persons whose allure crosses all frontiers--a mystique not confined to women, for Nureyev has it, Nehru had it, so did the youthful Marlon Brando and Elvis Presley, so did Montgomery Clift and James Dean.”

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Author:Truman Capote
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“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.”

FavoriteFirst SentenceFavorite BooksBreakfast At Tiffany STruman CapoteHolly GolightlyFirst PageLiterally The Perfect First Page
Book:Breakfast at Tiffany's
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“Oh yes," said Randolph stretching his legs , lighting a mentholated cigarette, "do not take it seriously, what you see here: it's only a joke played on myself by myself... it amuses and horrifies... a rather gaudy grave, you might say. There is no daytime in this room, or night, the seasons are changeless here, and the years, and when I die, if indeed I haven't already, then let me be dead drunk and curled, as in my mother's womb, in the warm blood of darkness. Wouldn't that be an ironic finale for one who, deep in his goddamned soul, sought sweetly the clean-limbed life? bread and water, a simple roof to share with some beloved, nothing more.”

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Book:Other Voices, Other Rooms
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“Entonces, un día comencé a escribir, sin saber que me había encadenado de por vida a un noble pero implacable amo. Cuando Dios le entrega a uno un don, también le da un látigo; y el látigo es únicamente para autoflagelarse. [...] La diferencia entre escribir bien y el arte verdadero es sutil, pero brutal. (Capote, pág. 9) »[...] En un cuento de Henry James, creo que “The Middle Years”, su personaje, un escritor en las sombras de la madurez, se lamenta: “Vivimos en la oscuridad, hacemos lo que podemos, el resto es la demencia del arte”. O palabras parecidas. En cualquier caso, míster James lo expone en toda la línea; nos está diciendo la verdad. Y la parte más negra de las sombras, la zona más demencial de la locura, es el riguroso juego que conlleva. (Capote, pp. 12-13) »Los escritores, cuando menos aquellos que corren auténticos riesgos, que están ansiosos por morder la bala y pasar la plancha de los piratas, tienen mucho en común con otra casta de hombres solitarios: los individuos que se ganan la vida jugando al billar y dando cartas. (Capote, pág. 13) »[...] Para empezar, creo que la mayoría de los escritores, incluso los mejores, son recargados. Yo prefiero escribir de menos. Sencilla, claramente, como arroyo del campo. (Capote, pág. 15). »[...] Entretanto, aquí estoy en mi oscura demencia, absolutamente solo con mi baraja de naipes y, desde luego, con el látigo que Dios me dio (Capote, pág. 17)”

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Book:Music For Chameleons
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“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 CapoteGrass HarpMaster Misery
Book:The Grass Harp, Including A Tree of Night and Other Stories
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