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Quotes by Truman Capote

A conversation is a dialogue, not a monologue. That's why there are so few good conversations: due to scarcity, two intelligent talkers seldom meet.
– Truman Capote
Adorned with cape, with tricorn, saintly soul singing in librarian tones an enameled song that coolly celebrates her chewing-gum enthusiasms.
– Truman Capote
All literature is gossip.
– Truman Capote
Even an attorney of moderate talent can postpone doomsday year after year, for the system of appeals that pervades American jurisprudence amounts to a legalistic wheel of fortune, a game of chance, somewhat fixed in the favor of the criminal, that the participants play interminably.
– Truman Capote
Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.
– Truman Capote
Fame is only good for one thing-they will cash your check in a small town.
– Truman Capote
Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the back yard and shot it.
– Truman Capote
Friendship is a pretty full-time occupation if you really are friendly with somebody. You can't have too many friends because then you're just not really friends.
– Truman Capote
Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call out there.
– Truman Capote
I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil.
– Truman Capote
I can see every monster as they come in.
– Truman Capote
I got this idea of doing a really serious big work-it would be precisely like a novel, with a single difference: Every word of it would be true from beginning to end.
– Truman Capote
I was eleven, then I was sixteen. Though no honors came my way, those were the lovely years.
– Truman Capote
Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act.
– Truman Capote
Love is a chain of love as nature is a chain of life.
– Truman Capote
Mick Jagger moves like a parody between a majorette girl and Fred Astaire.
– Truman Capote
Most contemporary novelists, especially the American and the French, are too subjective, mesmerized by private demons; they're enraptured by their navels and confined by a view that ends with their own toes.
– Truman Capote
She is pure Alice in Wonderland, and her appearance and demeanor are a nicely judged mix of the Red Queen and a flamingo.
– Truman Capote
That's not writing, that's typing.
– Truman Capote
The quietness of his tone italicized the malice of his reply.
– Truman Capote
To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the inner music that words make.
– Truman Capote
Venice is like eating an entire box of chocolate liqueurs in one go.
– Truman Capote
Well, I'm about as tall as a shotgun, and just as noisy.
– Truman Capote
When God hands you a gift, he also hands you a whip; and the whip is intended for self-flagellation solely.
– Truman Capote
Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.
– Truman Capote
Writing stopped being fun when I discovered the difference between good writing and bad and, even more terrifying, the difference between it and true art. And after that, the whip came down.
– Truman Capote