105 Best Truman Capote Quotes From The Famous American Novelist
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Born on September 30, 1924, in New Orleans, Capote was a celebrated literary figure of his time.
By age eight, Truman recognized his calling as a novel writer and worked on it throughout his childhood. He began his career by writing short stories, and one of his most acclaimed novels is 'In Cold Blood', a journalistic non-fiction novel.
Capote had a troubled childhood trying to deal with his parents' divorce. He inherited his last name from his mother’s second marriage to Joseph Garcia Capote.
As a child, he lived with them in Millbrook, Connecticut, where he completed his high school eductaion. He gave up further studies afterward. He was only 21 years of age when he gained literary recognition in 1945 for his short story 'Miriam'.
We have compiled the best Truman Capote book quotes and other popular quotes about Truman Capote for you here! Truman Capote 'Breakfast At Tiffany's' quotes are also very popular, from the book which led to the making of the iconic film.
Here are some of the most well-known Truman Capote quotes. If you like these, check out our list of 'Breakfast At Tiffany's' quotes and John Steinbeck quotes too.
Famous Truman Capote Quotes
Ready to discover the best Truman Capote quotes and sayings? Over the years, Capote has written many profound words in his books and plays, resulting in lots of great Truman Capote quotes. Here are some of the best Truman Capote quotes we hope you’ll enjoy, including his iconic line: "Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor."
- Truman Capote.
1. “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.
2. “It should take you about four seconds to walk from here to the door. I’ll give you two.”
- Truman Capote.
3. “There is only one unpardonable sin- deliberate cruelty. All rest can be forgiven.”
- Truman Capote.
4. “Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.”
- Truman Capote.
5. “I don’t care what anybody says about me as long as it isn’t true.”
- Truman Capote.
6. “Fame is only good for one thing - they will cash your check in a small town.”
- Truman Capote.
7. “Well, I’m about as tall as a shotgun, and just as noisy.”
- Truman Capote.
8. “The brain may take advice, but not the heart.”
- Truman Capote.
9. “You can’t give your heart to a wild thing.”
- Truman Capote.
10. “There are certain shades of limelight that can wreck a girl's complexion.”
- Truman Capote.
11. “The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call ‘out there.’”
- Truman Capote.
12. “Young men think old men are fools; but old men know young men are fools.”
- Truman Capote.
13. “It’s better to look at the sky than live there.”
- Truman Capote.
14. “New York is the only real city-city.”
- Truman Capote.
15. “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.”
- Truman Capote.
16. “How do I look so young? Quite simple: a complete vegetable diet, 12 hours sleep a night, and lots and lots of make-up.”
- Truman Capote.
17. “But I must say an iota of stress, striving toward deadlines, does me good.”
- Truman Capote.
18. “I was eleven, then I was sixteen. Though no honors came my way, those were the lovely years.”
- Truman Capote.
19. “It is the want to know the end that makes us believe in God, or witchcraft, believe, at least, in something.”
- Truman Capote.
20. “Still, when all is said, somewhere one must belong: even the soaring falcon returns to its master's wrist.”
- Truman Capote.
21. “I don't want to own anything until I find a place where me and things go together.”
- Truman Capote.
22. “I told you: you can make yourself love anybody.”
- Truman Capote.
23. “Aprils have never meant much to me, autumns seem that season of beginning, spring.”
- Truman Capote.
24. “More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones.”
- Truman Capote.
25. “Home is where you feel at home. I'm still looking.”
- Truman Capote.
26. “Maybe the older you grow and the less easy it is to put thought into action, maybe that’s why it gets all locked up in your head and becomes a burden.”
- Truman Capote.
27. “I’d rather have cancer than a dishonest heart. Which isn’t being pious. Just practical.”
- Truman Capote.
28. “I can see every monster as they come in.”
- Truman Capote.
29. “When I think of Paris, it seems to me as romantic as a flooded pissoir, as tempting as a strangled nude floating in the Seine.”
- Truman Capote.
30. “But my dear, so few things are fulfilled: what are most lives but a series of incomplete episodes.”
- Truman Capote.
31. “I'll never get used to anything. Anybody that does they might as well be dead.”
- Truman Capote.
32. “It’s a scientific fact that if you stay in California, you lose one point of your IQ every year.”
- Truman Capote.
33. “There’s got to be something wrong with us. To do what we did.”
- Truman Capote.
34. “In my garden, after a rainfall, you can faintly, yes, hear the breaking of new blooms.”
- Truman Capote.
35. “I am always drawn back to places where I have lived, the houses and their neighborhoods.”
- Truman Capote.
36. “I despise people who can't control themselves.”
- Truman Capote.
37. “My major regret in life is that my childhood was unnecessarily lonely.”
- Truman Capote.
38. “I don't think I've ever drunk champagne before breakfast before. With breakfast on several occasions, but never before before.”
- Truman Capote.
39. “Let's take everything just as it is.”
- Truman Capote.
40. “Dizzy with excitement is no mere phrase.”
- Truman Capote.
41. “You don't run out on people; you run out on yourself.”
- Truman Capote.
42. “Oh Jesus God we did belong to each other. He was mine.”
- Truman Capote.
43. “I remember things the way they should have been.”
- Truman Capote.
44. “It may be normal, darling; but I’d rather be natural.”
- Truman Capote.
45. “Venice is like eating an entire box of chocolate liqueurs in one go.”
- Truman Capote.
46. “She sounds the way bananas taste.”
- Truman Capote.
47. “Love should be allowed. I’m all for it. Now that I’ve got a pretty good idea what it is.”
- Truman Capote.
48. “Here is a hall without exit, a tunnel without end.”
- Truman Capote.
49. “Anyone who ever gave you confidence, you owe them a lot.”
- Truman Capote.
50. “If you let yourself love a wild thing. You’ll end up looking at the sky.”
- Truman Capote.
51. “All of the future exists in the past.”
- Truman Capote.
52. “Wrinkles and bones, white hair and diamonds: I can't wait.”
- Truman Capote.
53. “Great fury, like great whisky, requires long fermentation.”
- Truman Capote.
54. “I thought of the future, and spoke of the past.”
- Truman Capote.
55. “It is very seldom that a person loves anyone they cannot in some way envy.”
- Truman Capote.
56. “Imagination, of course, can open any door - turn the key and let terror walk right in.”
- Truman Capote.
57. “I've got something inside of me, peasant-like and stubborn, and I'm in it till the end of the race.”
- Truman Capote.
58. “We all, sometimes, leave each other there under the skies, and we never understand why.”
- Truman Capote.
59. “Clocks indeed must have their sacrifice: what is death but an offering to time and eternity?”
- Truman Capote.
60. “Never pump the well dry; always leave a bucket there.”
- Truman Capote.
61. “When you've got nowhere to turn, turn on the gas.”
- Truman Capote.
62. “The problem with living outside the law is that you no longer have its protection.”
- Truman Capote.
63. “It's the hardest when someone has a notion about you and it's impossible to convince them otherwise.”
- Truman Capote.
64. “It's bad enough in life to do without something you want; but confound it, what gets my goat is not being able to give somebody something you want them to have.”
- Truman Capote.
65. “Love is a chain of love as nature is a chain of life.”
- Truman Capote.
66. “A beautiful day with the buoyancy of a bird.”
- Truman Capote.
67. “Every day she'd walk a little further: a mile, and come home. Two miles, and come home. One day she just kept on.”
- Truman Capote.
68. “Anticipation is anxiety. I have always had a very extreme anxiety thing.”
- Truman Capote.
69. “Leave it to me: I'm always top banana in the shock department.”
- Truman Capote.
70. “I dream of eagles and bring forth sparrows.”
- Truman Capote.
Truman Capote Quotes About Books And Writing
Are you ready for the final installment of Truman Capote quotes? Capote’s later writings did not see the same level of success that his earlier works did.
However, he had already established himself as a celebrated author years ago. Here are some of the best quotes by Truman Capote on books and writing for you to cherish. What will you learn from these Truman Capote quotes and sayings?
71. “Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the backyard and shot it.”
- Truman Capote.
72. “Sometimes, when I think how good my books can be, I can hardly breathe.”
- Truman Capote.
73. “You can’t blame the writer for what the characters say.”
- Truman Capote.
74. “I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil.”
- Truman Capote.
75. “To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it’s about, but the inner music that words make.”
- Truman Capote.
76. “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.
77. “Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act.”
- Truman Capote.
78. “The feeble-minded, the neurotic, the criminal, perhaps, also, the artist, have unpredictability and perverted innocence in common.”
- Truman Capote.
79. “On the whole, journalism is the most underestimated, the least explored of literary mediums.”
- Truman Capote.
80. “I’ll give you fifty dollars if you produced a writer who can honestly say he was ever helped by the prissy carpings and condescensions of reviewers.”
- Truman Capote.
81. “I feel slightly as though I’ve never lived a tranquil moment…”
- Truman Capote.
82. “I like to talk on TV about those things that aren't worth writing about.”
- Truman Capote.
83. “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.”
- Truman Capote.
84. “I never write – indeed, am physically incapable of writing – anything that I don’t think will be paid for.”
- Truman Capote.
85. “A work of art is one of mystery, the one extreme magic; everything else is either arithmetic or biology.”
- Truman Capote.
86. “When seriously explored, the short story seems to me the most difficult and disciplining form of prose writing extant.”
- Truman Capote.
87. “I prefer to underwrite. Simple, clear as a country creek.”
- Truman Capote.
88. “Of course, at their best, movies are anti-literature and, as a medium, belong not to writers, not to actors, but to directors.”
- Truman Capote.
89. “It isn't writing at all - it's typing.”
- Truman Capote.
90. “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.
91. “Most people don't find their creativity. There are more unsung geniuses that don't even know they have great talent.”
- Truman Capote.
92. “I am a completely horizontal author. I can't think unless I'm lying down, either in bed or stretched on a couch.”
- Truman Capote.
93. “Never demean yourself by talking back to a critic, never. Write those letters to the editor in your head, but don’t put them on paper.”
- Truman Capote.
94. “It takes a lot of bad writing to get to a little good writing.”
- Truman Capote.
95. “My preferred pastimes are conversation, reading, travel, and writing, in that order.”
- Truman Capote.
96. “A very fine artist can take something quite ordinary and, through sheer artistry and willpower, turn it into a work of art.”
- Truman Capote.
97. “What I am trying to achieve is a voice sitting by a fireplace telling you a story on a winter’s evening.”
- Truman Capote.
98. “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.
99. “The quietness of his tone italicized the malice of his reply.”
- Truman Capote.
100. “Reading dreams. That's what started her walking down the road.”
- Truman Capote.
101. “I mean, it's always nice to know where you're going is my theory.”
- Truman Capote.
102. “I think of myself as a stylist, and stylists can become notoriously obsessed with the placing of a comma, the weight of a semicolon.”
- Truman Capote.
103. “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 the art of solving a mystery.”
- Truman Capote.
104. “There is such an animal as a non-stylist, only they're not writers - they're typists.”
- Truman Capote.
105. “I never cared for his writings one whit. Boring ... boring.”
- Truman Capote.
Here at Kidadl, we have carefully created lots of interesting family-friendly quotes for everyone to enjoy! If you liked our suggestions for 105 of the best Truman Capote quotes from the famous American novelist of 'In Cold Blood', then why not take a look at these JD Salinger quotes or Kurt Vonnegut quotes for more great quotes?
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A diligent and driven mass communications graduate from Caleb University, Lydia has experience in media and a passion for digital marketing and communications. She is an effective communicator and team-builder with strong analytical, management, and organizational skills. She is a self-starter with a positive, can-do attitude.
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