Top 400 Truman Capote Quotes (2026 Update)
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401. “He lost her to a quadrille of partners who gobbled up her stammered jokes like popcorn tossed to pigeons.”

— Truman Capote

402. “Graham Greene was a first-class writer. Until the Vatican grabbed him.”

— Truman Capote

403. “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

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

— Truman Capote

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

— Truman Capote

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

— Truman Capote

407. “When he was in the army he’d picked up a great many girls: sometimes nothing happened except a lot of talk, and that was all right too: because it didn’t matter what you said to them, for in those transient moments lies or truth were arbitrary and you were whatever you wanted to be.”

— Truman Capote

408. “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

409. “Lovely dimes, the liveliest coin, the one that really jingles.”

— Truman Capote

410. “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

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

— Truman Capote

412. “The guests stand about in petrified pairs, and there is no conversation. He notices then that many are also saddled with malevolent semblances of themselves, outward embodiments of inner decay.”

— Truman Capote

413. “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

414. “All human life has its seasons, and no one’s personal chaos can be permanent: winter, after all, does not last forever, does it? There is summer, too, and spring, and though sometimes when branches stay dark and the earth cracks with ice, one thinks they will never come, that spring, that summer, but they do, and always.”

— Truman Capote

415. “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

416. “No,” she said slowly. “No, the blues are because you’re getting fat or maybe it’s been raining too long. You’re sad, that’s all. But the mean reds are horrible. You’re afraid and you sweat like hell, but you don’t know what you’re afraid of. Except something bad is going to happen, only you don’t know what it is. You’ve had that feeling?” “Quite often. Some people call it angst.” “All right. Angst. But what do you do about it?” “Well, a drink helps.”

— Truman Capote

417. “He went back upstairs, and sat at his desk, and felt as though he were bleeding inside, and wished very much to believe in God.”

— Truman Capote

418. “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

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

— Truman Capote

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

— Truman Capote

421. “Mr. Capote twice won the O. Henry Memorial Short Story Prize and was a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. He died in August 1984, shortly before his sixtieth birthday.”

— Truman Capote

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

— Truman Capote

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

— Truman Capote

424. “All literature is ultimately gossip.”

— Truman Capote

425. “The fine lawn surrounding.”

— Truman Capote

426. “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

427. “Kay yawned and rested her forehead against the windowpane, her fingers idly strumming the guitar: the strings sang a hollow, lulling tune, as monotonously soothing as the Southern landscape, smudged in darkness, flowing past the window. An icy winter moon rolled above the train across the night sky like a thin white wheel.”

— Truman Capote

428. “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

429. “A gentleman from Japan.”

— Truman Capote

430. “Joe James, dark-haired, even darker-skinned than Perry, a lithe figure who with his faded huntsman’s shirt and moccasined feet looked as though he had that instant mysteriously emerged from woodland shadows, told.”

— Truman Capote

431. “It was not, however, an atmosphere she would have chosen for herself – the airless inescapable pressures of intimacy with others would have withered her soon enough – her system required the cold, exclusive climate of the individual.”

— Truman Capote

432. “She was one of those people who can disguise themselves as an object in the room, a shadow in the corner, whose presence is a delicate happening.”

— Truman Capote

433. “He must be one of the most alone people there ever was. But. Aw, the hell with him. It’s mostly every bit his own fault.”

— Truman Capote

434. “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

435. “I think the only person a writer has an obligation to is himself. If what I write doesn’t fulfill something in me, if I don’t honestly feel it’s the best I can do, then I’m miserable.”

— Truman Capote