Truman Capote

“There is considerable hypocrisy in conventionalism. Any thinking person is aware of this paradox; but in dealing with conventional people it is advantageous to treat them as though they were not hypocrites. It isn't a question of faithfulness to your own concepts; it is a matter of compromise so that you can remain an individual without the constant threat of conventional pressures.”

“Happiness leaves such slender records; it is the dark days that are so voluminously documented.”

“But the address, if it ever existed, never was sent, which made me sad, there was so much I wanted to write her: that I'd sold two stories, had read where the Trawlers were countersuing for divorce, was moving out of the brownstone because it was haunted. But mostly, I wanted to tell about her cat. I had kept my promise; I had found him. It took weeks of after-work roaming through those Spanish Harlem streets, and there were many false alarms--flashes of tiger-striped fur that, upon inspection, were not him. But one day, one cold sunshiny Sunday winter afternoon, it was. Flanked by potted plants and framed by clean lace curtains, he was seated in the window of a warm-looking room: I wondered what his name was, for I was certain he had one now, certain he'd arrived somewhere he belonged. African hut or whatever, I hope Holly has, too.”

“But, Doc, I'm not fourteen any more, and I'm not Lulamae. But the terrible part is (and I realized it while we were standing there) I am. I'm still stealing turkey eggs and running through a brier patch. Only now I call it having the mean reds.”

“Then starting home, he walked toward the trees, and under them, leaving behind him the big sky, the whisper of wind voices in the wind-bent wheat.”

“You know those days when you get the mean reds?""Same as the blues?""No," she said slowly. "No, the blues are because you're getting fat or maybe it's been raining too long. You're sad, that's all. But the mean reds are horrible. You're afraid and you sweat like hell, but you don't know what you're afraid of...”

“They shared a doom against which virtue was no defense”

“Se alguém prestar atenção ao vocabulário de qualquer pessoa, notará que certas palavras-chave para entender sua personalidade se repetem.”

“[...] ele agora olhava para as pessoas com segurança e com uma expressão que só podia ser descrita como condescendente, como se ele circulasse em esferas de esclarecimento a que os outros não tinham acesso, infelizmente.”

“His dreams were clear blue”

“Our backs hut from gathering them: how hard they were to find among the concealing leaves, the frosted deceiving grass.”

“Always, the path unwinds through lemony sun pools and pitch vine tunnels.”

“Think of nothing things, think of wind.”

“In the eyelid-blue betweenness the wordy sounds of the whiskey-drinkers spilled distantly.”

“if concealment is the single weapon, then a villain is never a villain; one smiles to the very end.”

“I thought that Mr. Clutter was a very nice gentleman. I thought so right up to the moment that I cut his throat.”

“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.”

“The only obligation any artist can have is to himself. His works means nothing, otherwise. It has no meaning.”

“Em Londres, um jovem artista me disse: 'Como deve ser maravilhoso para um norte-americano viajar para a Europa pela primeira vez; vocês não fazem parte disso, portanto nada sentem da dor, jamais terão de suportá-la. Para vocês, na Europa, só existe a beleza'.”

“Estar na Europa era assim. Uma ponte para a infância, que conduzia ao outro lado do oceano, através de florestas, até as paisagens primordiais da minha imaginação. De um jeito ou de outro, eu havia ido a muitos lugares, do México ao Maine - e pensar que tive de ir até a Europa para poder voltar a minha cidade natal, minha lareira, meu quarto onde histórias e lendas pareciam sempre extrapolar os limites municipais. Ali moravam as lendas: na lira, no castelo, no farfalhar das asas dos cisnes.”

“Alguém perguntou: 'você acha que ela é inteligente?'. Isso me pareceu uma pergunta ultrajante; sério, importa para alguém se ela é inteligente ou não? Sem dúvida basta que um rosto assim exista, embora a própria Garbo possa ter chegado ao ponto de lamentar a trágica responsabilidade de possuí-lo. Não tem graça nenhuma seu desejo de ficar sozinha; claro que deseja isso. Imagino que seja o único momento em que ela não se sente só: se a pessoa percorre um caminho singular, guarda sempre uma certa melancolia, mas não se lamenta em público.”

“And in this moment, like a swift intake of breath, the rain came.”

“It is very seldom that a person loves anyone they cannot in some way envy.”

“The walls of the cell fell away, the sky came down, I saw the big yellow bird.”

“My preferred pastimes are conversation, reading, travel and writing, in that order.”

“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.”

“A girl doesn't read this sort of thing without her lipstick." -Holly Golightly”

“A person ought to be able to marry men or women... . No, I'm serious. Love should be allowed. I'm all for it. Now that I've got a pretty good idea what it is." - Holly Golightly”

“Never love a wild thing... you can't give your heart to a wild thing: the more you do, the stronger they get. Until they're strong enough to run into the woods. Or fly into a tree. Then a taller tree. Then the sky. That's how you'll end up... . If you let yourself love a wild thing. You'll end up looking at the sky.”

“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”

“That's how you'll end up, Mr. Bell. If you let yourself love a wild thing. You'll end up looking at the sky.”

“He думай, я не собираюсь цепляться за Жозе. По моей переписи он гражданин преисподней.”

“Her fingers tested the reality of his chin.”

“It was an atmosphere of luxurious exhaustion, like a ripened, shedding rose, while all that waited outside wad the failing New York afternoon.”

“Nudien,labāk vēzis nekā negodīga sirds. Tā nav svētulība, tas ir vienkāršs aprēķins. Vēzis var tevi saēst un var nesaēst, bet negodīga sirds saēdīs uz galvošanu.”

“Katram cilvēkam vajadzētu ļaut mīlēt to, ko viņš pats vēlas, -vīrieti, sievieti, manis pēc kaut vai... ja tu kādu dienu paziņotu, ka gribi precēties ar zemūdeni, -visu cieņu! Es nebūt nejokoju. Es esmu par mīlestību.! Jo vairāk tāpēc, ka tagad zinu, kas tā tāda ir.”

“Es gribu sacīt- ja tu pinies ar kādu vīrieti un dzīvo no viņa naudas, tad vismaz pacenties sev iegalvot, ka mīli viņu.”

“Šīs sievietes pievilcība slēpās viņas neglītumā, bet neglītums dažkārt spēj apburt pat vairāk nekā īsts skaistums- it sevišķi tad, ja satur paradoksu.”

“..mēs viens otram nepiederam- viņš dzīvo savu dzīvi, es- savu. Negribu nevienu pieradināt , iekams neesmu sameklējusi sev īstās mājas. Pagaidām vēl nezinu, kur tās ir. Bet es zinu, kā es tajās gribētu justies.”

“... crystal spheres imprisoning green lizards, salamanders, millefiori bouquets dragonflies, a basket of pears, butterflies alighted on a frond of fern, swirls of pink and white and blue and white, shimmering like fireworks, cobras ready to strike, pretty little arrangements of pansies, magnificent poinsettias ...”

“Sometimes when I think how good my book can be, I can hardly breathe.”

“Grady knew no one she thought less attractive than Mink, or more preposterous than Winifred: yet together and around them they made a clear, lovely, light: it was as if, out of their ordinary stone, their massive unshaped selves, something precious had been set free, a figure musical and pure: she could not but pay it homage.”

“I thought of the future, and spoke of the past.”

“For a long while- for many years, in fact- he had not thought of how it was before he came to the farm. His memory of those times was like a house where no one lives and where the furniture has rotted away. But tonight it was as if lamps had been lighted through all the gloomy dead rooms. It had begun to happen when he saw Tico Feo coming through the dusk with his splendid guitar. Until that moment he had not been lonesome. Now, recognizing his loneliness, he felt alive. He had not wanted to be alive. To be alive was to remember brown rivers where the fish run, and sunlight on a lady's hair.”

“But the mean reds are horrible. You're afraid and you sweat like hell, but you don't know what you're afraid of. Except something bad is going to happen, only you don't know what that is.”

“And since gin to artifice bears the same relation as tears to mascara, her attractions at once dissembled.”

“Existe una raza de hombres inadaptados, de hombres que no pueden parar ni establecerse, hombres que destrozan el corazón de quien se acerque a ellos y que vagan por el mundo a la ventura...Recorren la tierra, remontan los ríos, escalan de la montaña las cimas más altas, llevan en sí la maldición de la sangre gitana y no saben lo que quiere decir descansar. Si no se movieran de una misma senda llegarían lejos: fuertes son, valientes y sinceros. Pero acaban cansándose siempre de todas las cosas y sólo adoran lo extraño y lo nuevo.”

“Brazil was beastly but Buenos Aires the best. Not Tiffany's, but almost.”

“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.”

“I felt infuriatingly left out -- a tugboat in drydock while she, glittery voyager of secure destination, steamed down the harbor with whistles whistling and confetti in the air.”