Quotes by "Truman Capote"

Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

That's not writing, that's typing.

You can love somebody without it being like that. You keep them a stranger, a stranger who's a friend.

He loved her, he loved her, and until he'd loved her she had never minded being alone....

Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act.

all his prayers of the past had been simple concrete requests: God, give me a bicycle, a knife with seven blades, a box of oil paints. Only how, how, could you say something so indefinite, so meaningless as this: God, let me be loved.

I'd rather have cancer than a dishonest heart. Which isn't being pious. Just practical. Cancer may cool you, but the other's sure to.

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.

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.

To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the music the words make.

Once a thing is set to happen, all you can do is hope it won't. Or will-depending. As long as you live, there’s always something waiting, and even if it’s bad, and you know it's bad, what can you do? You can’t stop living.

You can't blame a writer for what the characters say.

Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the back yard and shot it.

I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil.

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.

That isn't writing at all, it's typing.

If there is no mystery, for the artist, to solve inside of his art, then there's no point in it. . . . for me, every act of art is the act of solving a mystery.

Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavour.

Love, having no geography, knows no boundaries.

Venice is like eating an entire box of chocolate liqueurs in one go.