Truman Capote
Truman Capote
Truman Garcia Capotewas an American novelist, screenwriter, playwright, and actor, many of whose short stories, novels, plays, and nonfiction are recognized literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffany'sand the true crime novel In Cold Blood, which he labeled a "nonfiction novel". At least 20 films and television dramas have been produced of Capote novels, stories, and plays...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth30 September 1924
CityNew Orleans, LA
CountryUnited States of America
I live in Brooklyn. By choice. Those ignorant of its allures are entitled to wonder why.
Ever since I was a child, folks have thought they had me pegged, because of the way I am, the way I talk. And they're always wrong.
Great fury, like great whisky, requires long fermentation.
Wrinkles and bones, white hair and diamonds: I can't wait.
Even an attorney of moderate talent can postpone doomsday year after year, for the system of appeals that pervades American jurisprudence amounts to a legalistic wheel of fortune, a game of chance, somewhat fixed in the favor of the criminal, that the participants play interminably.
[T]he army of wrongness rampant in the world might as well march over me.
What I do requires fantastic concentration... but you can't be totally alone, or you lose all contact with reality, so even when I'm engrossed and secluded, Jack Dunphy can be there. He's my oldest and best friend, and best critic too.
Of course people couldn't help but think I must be a bit of a dyke myself. And of course I am. Everyone is: a bit. So what? That never discouraged a man yet, in fact it seems to goad them on.
You can do films for the fun of it, or the thrill of it, but certain films you can't do unless there's something driving you, something you have a passion for that will pull you through.
It takes a lot of bad writing to get to a little good writing.
I was terribly sure trees and flowers were the same as birds or people. That they thought things and talked among themselves. And we could hear them if we really tried. It was just a matter of emptying your head of all other sounds. Being very quiet and listening very hard. Sometimes I still believe that. But one can never get quiet enough...
[L]ove, having no geography, knows no boundaries.
I don't use a typewriter, I write longhand, with a pencil. Essentially I'm a horizontal writer. I think better when I'm lying down.
But there were moments when she played songs that made you wonder where she learned them, where indeed she came from. Harsh-tender wandering tunes with words that smacked of pinewoods or prairie. One went: Don’t wanna sleep, Don’t wanna die, Just wanna go a-travelin’ through the pastures of the sky; and this one seemed to gratify her the most, for often she continued it long after her hair hard dried, after the sun had gone and there were lighted windows in the dusk.