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

“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.”

“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.”

“would you reach in the drawer there and give me my purse. A girl doesn't read this sort of thing without her lipstick.”

“That's not writing, that's typing.”

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

“To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it’s about, but the inner music that words make.”