Top 400 Truman Capote Quotes (2024 Update)
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351. “Never love a wild thing, Mr. Bell,’ Holly advised him. ‘That was Doc’s mistake. He was always lugging home wild things. A hawk with a hurt wing. One time it was a full-grown bobcat with a broken leg. But you can’t give your heart to a wild thing; the more you do, the stronger they get. Until they’re strong enough to run into the woods. Or fly into a tree. Then a taller tree. Then the sky. That’s how you’ll end up Mr. Bell. If you let yourself love a wild thing. You’ll end up looking at the sky.”

— Truman Capote

352. “So I say the sane thing to do is shut up. You live until you die, and it doesn’t matter how you go; dead’s dead.”

— Truman Capote

353. “You know what’s going to happen to you?” she said, with no hint of a stutter. “I’m going to march you over to the zoo and feed you to the yak.”

— Truman Capote

354. “I don’t want to own anything until I find a place where me and things go together. I’m not sure where that is but I know what it is like.”

— Truman Capote

355. “Her smile was fragmentary, it clung to her lips like cake crumbs.”

— Truman Capote

356. “Mille tendresse.”

— Truman Capote

357. “We are speaking of love. A leaf, a handful of seed – begin with these, learn a little what it is to love. First a leaf, a fall of rain, then someone to receive what a leaf has taught you, what a fall of rain has ripened. No easy process, understand; it could take a lifetime, it has mine, and still I’ve never mastered it – I only know how true it is; that love is a chain of love, as nature is a chain of life.”

— Truman Capote

358. “The stifling room was musty; it smelled of old furniture and the burned out fires of wintertime...”

— Truman Capote

359. “Four shotgun blasts that, all told, ended six human lives.”

— Truman Capote

360. “Brazil! That’s where they’re building a whole new capital city. Right from scratch. Imagine getting in on the ground floor of something like that! Any fool could make a fortune.”

— Truman Capote

361. “La idea de someterme a otra forma de vida disciplinada me desesperaba.”

— Truman Capote

362. “Holly had married him: well, well. I wished I were under the wheels of the train.”

— Truman Capote

363. “E mai bine sa te uiti la cer decat sa traiesti acolo. Un loc atat de singuratic; atat de nelamurit. Doar un tinut unde se ivesc trasnete si unde totul dispare.”

— Truman Capote

364. “Dar e duminica, domnule Bell. Ceasurile raman in urma duminica. Si apoi, nici nu m-am culcat inca, ii spuse ea si apoi ii marturisi: Vreau sa spun – nu ca sa dorm.”

— Truman Capote

365. “But mostly, I wanted to tell about her cat. I had kept my promise; I had found him. It took weeks of after-work roaming through those Spanish Harlem streets... he was seated in the window of a warm-looking room: I wondered what his name was, for I was certain he had one now, certain he’d arrived somewhere he belonged. African hut or whatever, I hope Holly has, too.”

— Truman Capote

366. “I have a fair chance they won’t catch me. Provided you keep your bouche fermez.”

— Truman Capote

367. “Mr. Belli had several vanities: for example, he thought he was saner than other people; also, he believed himself to be a walking compass; his digestion, and an ability to read upside down, were other ego-enlarging items. But his reflection in a mirror aroused little inner applause; not that he disliked his appearance; he just knew that it was very so-what.”

— Truman Capote

368. “He had merely fallen face down across the bed, as though sleep were a weapon that had struck him from behind.”

— Truman Capote

369. “And turning in space, her hair swung like a victory. They danced until all at once and as one the music dimmed and the stars went dark.”

— Truman Capote

370. “Far from resenting these lessons, the pupil, to please his tutor, once composed a sheaf of poems, and though the verses were very obscene, Perry, who thought them nevertheless hilarious, had had the manuscript leather-bound in a prison shop and its title, Dirty Jokes, stamped in gold.”

— Truman Capote

371. “Really, though, I toted up the other night, and I’ve only had eleven lovers – not counting anything that happened before I was thirteen because, after all, that just doesn’t count.”

— Truman Capote

372. “The inhabitants of the village, numbering two hundred and seventy, were satisfied that this should be so, quite content to exist inside ordinary life – to work, to hunt, to watch television, to attend school socials, choir practice, meetings of the 4-H Club.”

— Truman Capote

373. “What’s the matter with you? Are trying to ruin the day? It’s a beautiful day: leave it alone!”

— Truman Capote

374. “Old women beat their heads against the walls, moaning men prostrated themselves: it was the art of sorrow, and those who best mimicked grief were much admired. After the funeral everyone went away, satisfied that they’d done a good job.”

— Truman Capote

375. “Excitement – a variety of creative coma – overcame me.”

— Truman Capote

376. “Autumns reward western Kansas for the evils that the remaining seasons impose: winter’s rough Colorado winds and hp-high, sheep-slaughtering snows; the slushes and the strange land fogs of spring; and summer, when even crows seek the puny shade, and the tawny infinitude of wheat stalks bristle, blaze.”

— Truman Capote

377. “Susan, summarizing the problem from Nancy’s viewpoint, had once said, “You love Bobby now, and you need him. But deep down even Bobby knows there isn’t any future in it. Later.”

— Truman Capote

378. “Ottilie was used to boldly smiling at men; but now her smile was fragmentary, it clung to her lips like cake crumbs.”

— Truman Capote

379. “He wants awfully to be inside staring out: anybody with their nose pressed against a glass is liable to look stupid.”

— Truman Capote

380. “But the hands of bidders flickered shyly – work-roughened hands timid of parting with hard-earned cash;.”

— Truman Capote

381. “Is it because my friend is shy with everyone except strangers that these strangers, and merest acquaintances, seem to us our truest friends?”

— Truman Capote

382. “It’s a bore, but the answer is good things only happen to you if you’re good.”

— Truman Capote

383. “It was drowning in the earth, this house, and they, all of them, were submerging with it.”

— Truman Capote

384. “Adoro Nueva York.”

— Truman Capote

385. “Inasmuch as I was born dead, how ironic that I should die at all; yes, born dead, literally: the midwife was perverse enough to slap me into life. Or did she?”

— Truman Capote

386. “Never mind, all difficult music must be heard more than once. And if what I tell you now sounds senseless, it will in retrospect seem far too clear; and when this happens, when those flowers in your eyes wither, irrecoverable as they are, why, though no tears helped dissolve my own cocoon, I shall weep a little for you.”

— Truman Capote

387. “A gentleman from Japan.”

— Truman Capote

388. “What have you done what have I done, like an echo in a cave that reduces all to nonsense.”

— Truman Capote

389. “I know how trite this is, Jaime. And for the moment certainly no help at all. But remember – there’s always somebody else. Just don’t look for the same person, that’s all.”

— Truman Capote

390. “There is no brand of intolerance so tiresome as that which results in condemning characteristics you yourself possess.”

— Truman Capote

391. “Da, in sfarsit mi s-a facut frica. Pentru ca s-ar putea sa o tin tot asa la nesfarsit. Sa nu stii ca ceva e al tau decat dupa ce te-ai descotorisit de el.”

— Truman Capote

392. “However, 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, first in the state courts, then through the Federal courts until the ultimate tribunal is reached – the United States Supreme Court.”

— Truman Capote

393. “If you walk a singular path, you always carry a certain grief.”

— Truman Capote

394. “The good people of Kansas want to murder me – and some hangman will be glad to get the work.”

— Truman Capote

395. “She played very well, and sometimes sang too. Sang in the hoarse, breaking tones of a boy’s adolescent voice.”

— Truman Capote

396. “That night I left a message in her mailbox: Tomorrow is Thursday.”

— Truman Capote

397. “Then he wrote ‘For Sale’ on the windshield. One day I heard a sucker stop and offer him forty bucks – that’s forty more than it was worth.”

— Truman Capote

398. “I didn’t know ten people who had radios.”

— Truman Capote

399. “Well, she wanted to know, what did people say of her, was she remembered?”

— Truman Capote

400. “Take ye heed, watch and pray: for ye know not when the time is.” THE.”

— Truman Capote