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
Most people who become suddenly famous overnight will find that they lose practically eighty percent of their friends. Your old friends just can't stand it for some reason.
There's something really the matter with most people who wear tattoos. There's at least some terrible story. I know from experience that there's always something terribly flawed about people who are tattooed, above some little something that Johnny had done in the Navy, even though that's a bad sign...It's terrible. Psychologically it's crazy. Most people who are tattooed, it's the sign of some feeling of inferiority, they're trying to establish some macho identification for themselves.
You don't run out on people; you run out on yourself.
I despise people who can't control themselves.
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.
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...
I've lived a lot in communist countries and they're intensely interested in money. I think they are more interested in money than capitalists are. They're the most materialistic people in the world. What they're actually living for is material things. The irony of that is that in communist countries there isn't anything to buy.
I got this idea of doing a really serious big work-it would be precisely like a novel, with a single difference: Every word of it would be true from beginning to end.
I think most people are very, very much motivated by sex - greed, sex, and hunger.
...of all things this was the saddest, that life goes on: if one leaves one's lover, life should stop for him, and if one disappears from the world, then the world should stop, too: and it never did. And that was the real reason for most people getting up in the morning: not because it would matter but because it wouldn't.
Most people don't find their creativity. There are more unsung geniuses that don't even know they have great talent.
I never cared for his writings one whit. Boring ... boring.
Adorned with cape, with tricorn, saintly soul singing in librarian tones an enameled song that coolly celebrates her chewing-gum enthusiasms.
I am sorry that it has been found necessary to cut the story, however, this seems to me to have been done not unintelligently, for which I am grateful. Nevertheless, I have, here and there, restored a few of these elisions, and made equivalent cuts elsewhere.