Truman Capote

Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act.

Fame is only good for one thing - they will cash your check in a small town.

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

Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.

I know it's become fashionable to depict the police as sadistic Cossacks riding down innocent citizens, but I've become well enough acquainted with law-enforcement agencies across the country to know that's just not the case. Of course, a certain small percentage of policemen are irresponsible...but that doesn't justify the current unjust barrage of propaganda against a tribe of men who are hard-working, underpaid and daily risking their lives to protect us. I'm sure there are isolated instances of police brutality, but the rising crime rate and urban violence constitute a far, far more pressing problem.

Love is a chain of love as nature is a chain of life.

Love, having no geography, knows no boundaries.

If there is no mystery, for the artist, to solve inside of his art, then there's no point in it. . . . for me, every act of art is the act of solving a mystery.

I tell you, my dear, Narcissus was no egoist_ he was merely another of us who, in our unshatterable isolation, recognized, on seeing his reflection, the one beautiful comrade, the only inseparable love_ poor Narcissus, possibly the only human who was ever honest on this point.

It was as if I were an oyster and somebody forced a grain of sand into my shell -- a grain of sand that I didn't know was there and didn't particularly welcome. Then a pearl started forming around the grain and it irritated me, made me angry, tortured me sometimes. But the oyster can't help becoming obsessed with the pearl.

That's not writing that's typing.

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

It's a very excruciating life facing that blank piece of paper every day and having to reach up somewhere into the clouds and bring something down out of them.

I've always seen myself as a winner even as a kid. If I hadn't I just might have gone down the drain a couple of times. I've got something inside of me peasantlike and stubborn and I'm in it 'til the end of the race.

Venice is like eating an entire box of chocolate liqueurs in one go.

In California everyone goes to a therapist is a therapist or is a therapist going to a therapist.

The most dangerous thing in the world is to make a friend of an Englishman because he'll come sleep in your closet rather than spend 10 shillings on a hotel.

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