Authors
Topics
Lists
Pictures
Resources
More about Truman Capote
Truman Capote Quotes
150 Sourced Quotes
Source
Report...
She had said she was afraid of Perry, and she was, but was it simply Perry she feared, or was it a configuration of which he was part [...]? The eldest, the brother she loved, had shot himself; Fern had fallen out of a window, or jumped; and Perry was committed to violence, a criminal.
Truman Capote
Source
Report...
People who are having a love-sex relationship are continuously lying to each other because the very nature of the relationship demands that they do, because you have to make a love object of this person, which means that you editorialize about them. You know? You cut out what you don't want to see, you add this if it isn't there. And so therefore you're building a lie. But in a friendship you don't do that. You do exactly the reverse. You try more and more to be as completely pure and straight as you can be.
Truman Capote
Source
Report...
I don't care what anybody says about me as long as it isn't true.
Also attributed to Dorothy Parker
Truman Capote
Source
Report...
I've had, and continue to receive, my full share of abuse, some of it extremely personal, but it doesn't faze me anymore. I can read the most outrageous libel about myself and never skip a pulse-beat. 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
Source
Report...
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.
Truman Capote
Source
Report...
I thought that Mr. Clutter was a very nice gentleman. I thought so right up to the moment that I cut his throat.
Truman Capote
Source
Report...
The main thing history teaches us that history teaches us—nothing.
Truman Capote
Source
Report...
Randolph," he said, "were you ever as young as me?" And Randolph said: "I was never so old.
Truman Capote
Source
Report...
Poor slob without a name. It's a little inconvenient, his not having a name. But I haven't the 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.
Truman Capote
Source
Report...
It is very seldom that a person loves anyone they cannot in some way envy.
Truman Capote
Source
Report...
This island, floating in river water like a diamond iceberg.
Truman Capote
Source
Report...
He'd always been willing to confess his faults, for, by admitting them, it was as if he made them no longer exist.
Truman Capote
Source
Report...
If a man doesn't like baseball, then he must like horses, and if he doesn't like either of them, well, I'm in trouble anyway: he don't like girls.
Truman Capote
Source
Report...
The brain may take advice, but not the heart, and love, having no geography, knows no boundaries: weight and sink it deep, no matter, it will rise and find the surface: and why not? any love is natural and beautiful that lies within a person's nature; only hypocrites would hold a man responsible for what he loves, emotional illiterates and those of righteous envy, who, in their agitated concern, mistake so frequently the arrow pointing to heaven for the one that leads to hell.
Truman Capote
Source
Report...
Love should be allowed. I'm all for it. Now that I've got a pretty good idea what it is.
Truman Capote
Source
Report...
The land is flat, and the views are awesomely extensive; horses, herds of cattle, a white cluster of grain elevators rising as gracefully as Greek temples are visible long before a traveler reaches them.
Truman Capote
Source
Report...
Anyone who is consistently consistent has a head made of biscuit.
Truman Capote
Source
Report...
But a man who doesn't dream is like a man who doesn't sweat. He stores up a lot of poison.
Truman Capote
Source
Report...
The only obligation any artist can have is to himself. His work means nothing, otherwise. It has no meaning.
Truman Capote
Source
Report...
The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call out there.
Truman Capote
Source
Report...
It is no shame to have a dirty face- the shame comes when you keep it dirty.
Truman Capote
Source
Report...
The way his plump hand clutched at her hip seemed somehow improper; not morally, aesthetically.
Truman Capote
Source
Report...
Any work of art, provided it springs from a sincere motivation to further understanding between people, is an act of faith and therefore is an act of love.
Truman Capote
Source
Report...
We don't belong to each other: he's an independent, and so am I.
Truman Capote
Source
Report...
[You've said your material chooses you.] That's the difference between the serious artist and the craftsman—-the craftsman can take material and because of his abilities do a professional job of it. The serious artist, like Proust, is like an object caught by a wave and swept to shore. He's obsessed by his material; it's like a venom working in his blood and the art is the antidote.
Truman Capote
1
2
3
4
5
6
Quote of the day
We owe something to extravagance, for thrift and adventure seldom go hand in hand.
Lady Randolph Churchill
Truman Capote
Creative Commons
Born:
September 30, 1924
Died:
August 25, 1984
(aged 59)
Bio:
Truman Capote, born Truman Streckfus Persons, was an American writer.
Known for:
In Cold Blood (1966)
Other Voices, Other Rooms (1948)
Answered Prayers: The Unfinished Novel
Music for Chameleons (1980)
The Grass Harp (1951)
Most used words:
love
time
man
thought
loved
day
year
art
heart
people
life
work
writing
person
understanding
Truman Capote on Wikipedia
Suggest an edit or a new quote
Truman Capote Quotes
Truman Capote Short Quotes
Quotes about Truman Capote
American Author Quotes
Author Quotes
20th-century Author Quotes
Related People
Harper Lee
American Author
Featured Authors
Lists
Predictions that didn't happen
If it's on the Internet it must be true
Remarkable Last Words (or Near-Last Words)
Picture Quotes
Confucius
Philip James Bailey
Eleanor Roosevelt
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Popular Topics
life
love
nature
time
god
power
human
mind
work
art
heart
thought
men
day
×
Lib Quotes