“[Y]outh is hardly human: it can't be, for the young never believe they will die...especially would they never believe that death comes, and often, in forms other than the natural one.”

“Most secrets should never be told, but especially those that are more menacing to the listener than to the teller.”

“The average personality reshapes frequently, every few years even our bodies undergo a complete overhaul - desirable or not, it is a natural thing that we should change. All right, here were two people who never would change. That is what Mildred Grossman had in common with Holly Golightly. They would never change because they'd been given their character too soon; which, like sudden riches, leads to a lack of proportion: the one had splurged herself into a top-heavy realist, the other a lopsided romantic.”

“I've tried to believe, but I don't, I can't, and there's no use pretending.”

“I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil.”

“You’re wrong. She is a phony. But on the other hand you’re right. She isn’t a phony because she’s a real phony. She believes all this crap she believes. You can’t talk her out of it.”

“Randolph," he said, "were you ever as young as me?" And Randolph said: "I was never so old.”