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

— Truman Capote

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

— Truman Capote

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

— Truman Capote

Very few authors, especially the unpublished, can resist an invitation to read aloud.

— Truman Capote

Watching her, I remembered a girl I'd known in school, a grind, Mildred Grossman. Mildred: with her moist hair and greasy spectacles, her strained fingers that dissected frogs and carried coffee to picket lines, her flat eyes that only turned toward the stars to estimate their chemical tonnage. Earth and air could not be more opposite than Mildred and Holly, yet in my head they acquired a Siamese twin ship, and the thread of thought that had sewn them together ran like this: the average personality reshapes frequently, every few years even our bodies undergo a complete overhaul--desirable or not, it is a natural thing that we should change. All right, here were two people who never would. That is what Mildred Grossman had in common with Holly Go lightly. They would never change because they'd been given their character too soon; which, like sudden riches, leads to a lack of proportion: the one had splurged herself into a top-heavy realist, the other a lopsided romantic. I imagined them in a restaurant of the future, Mildred still studying the menu for its nutritional values, Holly still gluttonous for everything on it. It would never be different. They would walk through life and out of it with the same determined step that took small notice of those cliffs at the left.

— Truman Capote

Well, I'm about as tall as a shotgun, and just as noisy.

— 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

— 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

When God hands you a gift, he also hands you a whip; and the whip is intended for self-flagellation solely.

— Truman Capote

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