Truman Capote

Truman Capote

"What are your chief vices? And virtues? I have no vices. The concept doesn't exist in my vocabulary. My chief virtue is gratitude"
47 Quotes
"What are your chief vices? And virtues? I have no vices. The concept doesn't exist in my vocabulary. My chief virtue is gratitude"
Truman Capote
"What I am trying to achieve is a voice sitting by a fireplace telling you a story on a winter’s evening."
Truman Capote
"Before publication, and if provided by persons whose judgment you trust, yes, of course criticism helps. But after something is published, all I want to read or hear is praise."
Truman Capote
"I only object when any one particular group...gets a stranglehold on American criticism and squeezes out anybody who doesn't conform to its own standards... The ax falls, ecumenically, on the head of anybody...who doesn't share this group's parochial preoccupations."
Truman Capote
"Because it's indeed difficult to portray, in any meaningful depth, another being, his appearance, speech, mentality, without to some degree, and often for quite trifling cause, offending him. The truth seems to be the nobody likes to see himself described as he is, or cares to see exactly set down what he said and did. Well, even i can understand that - because i don't like it myself when I am the sitter not the portraitist: the frailty of egos- and the more accurate the strokes, the greater the resentment."
Truman Capote
"You can’t give your heart to a wild thing."
Truman Capote
"A kind of silence, if I may say, was walking through the house, and, like most silence, it was not silent at all: it rapped on the doors, echoed in the clocks, creaked on the stairs, leaned forward to peer into my face and explode."
Truman Capote
"The only obligation any artist can have is to himself. His works means nothing, otherwise. It has no meaning."
Truman Capote
"“Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.”"
Truman Capote
"Fitzgerald has charm. It's a silly word, but it's an exact word for me. I like 'The Great Gatsby' and it's sad, gay nostalgia."
Truman Capote
"I think the argument that no whites are free of racism is quite erroneous. But then, on another level, does it really matter if anybody is free of any negative feeling about anything? No matter how much you love somebody, you know, there's some part of him you don't like."
Truman Capote
"A very fine artist can take something quite ordinary and, through sheer artistry and willpower, turn it into a work of art."
Truman Capote
"The only rich women who ever interested me, the ones who were ever my friends, were adventuresses---people who were total self-creations."
Truman Capote
"I have an extremely strong, masculine mind and a feminine sensibility level, which is kind of an unusual combination. Both men and women tell me things and I can relate on two levels simultaneously."
Truman Capote
"The trouble with all these far-right and far-left mentalities is that they can encompass only one side of an argument and are congenitally incapable of holding two opinions in their heads at the same time."
Truman Capote
"Friendship is a pretty full-time occupation if you really are friendly with somebody. You can't have too many friends because then you're just not really friends."
Truman Capote
"Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavour."
Truman Capote
"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."
Truman Capote
"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."
Truman Capote
"That isn't writing at all, it's typing."
Truman Capote
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