“It's bad enough in life to do without something YOU want; but confound it, what gets my goat is not being able to give somebody something you want THEM to have.”
― Truman Capote, quote from A Christmas Memory
“My, how foolish I am! You know what I've always thought? I've always thought a body would have to be sick and dying before they saw the Lord. And I imagined that when He came it would be like looking at the Baptist window: pretty as colored glass with the sun pouring through, such a shine you don't know it's getting dark. And it's been a comfort: to think of that shine taking away all the spooky feeling. But I'll wager it never happens. I'll wager at the very end a body realizes the Lord has already shown Himself. That things as they are, just what they've always seen, was seeing Him. As for me, I could leave the world with today in my eyes.”
― Truman Capote, quote from A Christmas Memory
“And when that happens, I know it. A message saying so merely confirms a piece of news some secret vein had already received, severing from me an irreplaceable part of myself, letting it loose like a kite on a broken string. That is why, walking across a school campus on this particular December morning, I keep searching the sky. As if I expected to see, rather like hearts, a lost pair of kites hurrying towards heaven.”
― Truman Capote, quote from A Christmas Memory
“I've always thought a body would have to be sick and dying before they saw the Lord. And I imagined that when He came it would be like looking at the Baptist window: pretty as coloured glass with the sun pouring through, such a shine you don't know it's getting dark. And it's been a spooky feeling. But I'll wager it never happens. I'll wager at the very end a body realizes the Lord has already shown Himself. That things as they are' - her hand circles in a gesture that gathers clouds and kites and grass and Queenie pawing earth over her bone - 'just what they've always senn, was seeing Him. As for me, I could leave the world with today in my eyes.”
― Truman Capote, quote from A Christmas Memory
“Always, the path unwinds through lemony sun pools and pitch vine tunnels.”
― Truman Capote, quote from A Christmas Memory
“The mill owner's wife persist. 'A dollar, my foot! Fifty cents. That's my last offer. Goodness, woman, you can get another one.' In answer, my friend gently reflects: 'I doubt it. There's never two of anything.”
― Truman Capote, quote from A Christmas Memory
“I could leave the world with today in my eyes.”
― Truman Capote, quote from A Christmas Memory
“When you're grown up, will we still be friends?”
― Truman Capote, quote from A Christmas Memory
“My friend has never been to a picture show, nor does she intend to: "I'd rather hear you tell the story, Buddy. That way I can imagine it more. Besides, a person my age shouldn't squander their eyes. When the Lord comes, let me see him clear." In addition to never having seen a movie, she has never: eaten in a restaurant, traveled more than five miles from home, received or sent a telegram, read anything except funny papers and the Bible, worn cosmetics, cursed, wished someone harm, told a lie on purpose, let a hungry dog go hungry. Here are a few things she has done, does do: killed with a hoe the biggest rattlesnake ever seen in this county (sixteen rattles), dip snuff (secretly), tame hummingbirds (just try it) till they balance on her finger, tell ghost stories (we both believe in ghosts) so tingling they chill you in July, talk to herself, take walks in the rain, grow the prettiest japonicas in town, know the recipe for every sort of oldtime Indian cure, including a magical wart remover.”
― Truman Capote, quote from A Christmas Memory
“We huddle in the bed, and she squeezes my hand I-love-you.”
― Truman Capote, quote from A Christmas Memory
“Who are they for?
Friends. Not necessarily neighbor friends: indeed, the larger share is intended for persons we've met maybe once, perhaps not at all. People who've struck our fancy. Like President Roosevelt. Like the Reverend and Mrs. J. C. Lucey, Baptist missionaries to Borneo who lectured here last winter. Or the little knife grinder who comes through town twice a year. Or Abner Packer, the driver of the six o'clock bus from Mobile, who exchanges waves with us every day as he passes in a dust-cloud whoosh. Or the young Wistons, a California couple whose car one afternoon broke down outside the house and who spent a pleasant hour chatting with us on the porch (young Mr. Wiston snapped our picture, the only one we've ever had taken). Is it because my friend is shy with everyone except strangers that these strangers, and merest acquaintances, seem to us our truest friends? I think yes. Also, the scrapbooks we keep of thank-you's on White House stationery, time-to-time communications from California and Borneo, the knife grinder's penny post cards, make us feel connected to eventful worlds beyond the kitchen with its view of a sky that stops.”
― Truman Capote, quote from A Christmas Memory
“One by one the household emerges, looking as though they'd like to kill us both; but it's Christmas, so they can't.”
― Truman Capote, quote from A Christmas Memory
“Those who Know Best decide that I belong in a military school. And so follows a miserable succession of bugle-blowing prisons, grim reveille-ridden summer camps. I have a new home too. But it doesn't count. Home is where my friend is, and there I never go.”
― Truman Capote, quote from A Christmas Memory
“Imagine a morning in late November. A coming of winter morning more than twenty years ago. Consider the kitchen of a spreading old house in a country town. A great black stove is its main feature; but there is also a big round table and a fireplace with two rocking chairs placed in front of it. Just today the fireplace commenced its seasonal roar. A woman with shorn white hair is standing at the kitchen window. She is wearing tennis shoes and a shapeless gray sweater over a summery calico dress. She is small and sprightly, like a bantam hen; but, due to a long youthful illness, her shoulders are pitifully hunched. Her face is remarkable—not unlike Lincoln’s, craggy like that, and tinted by sun and wind; but it is delicate, too, finely boned, and her eyes are sherry-colored and timid. “Oh my,” she exclaims, her breath smoking the windowpane, “it’s fruitcake weather!”
― Truman Capote, quote from A Christmas Memory
“Our backs hut from gathering them: how hard they were to find among the concealing leaves, the frosted deceiving grass.”
― Truman Capote, quote from A Christmas Memory
“Quite deliberately my friend drops a kettle on the floor. I tap-dance in front of closed doors. One by one the household emerges, looking as though they'd like to kill us both; but it's Christmas, so they can't.”
― Truman Capote, quote from A Christmas Memory
“Giveya two-bits" cash for that ol tree." Ordinarily my friend is afraid of saying no; but on this occasion she promptly shakes her head: "We wouldn't take a dollar." The mill owner's wife persists. "A dollar, my foot! Fifty cents. That's my last offer. Goodness, woman, you can get another one." In answer, my friend gently reflects: "I doubt it. There's never two of anything.”
― Truman Capote, quote from A Christmas Memory
“If you please, Mr. Haha, we'd like a quart of your finest whiskey."
His eyes tilt more. Would you believe it? Haha is smiling! Laughing, too. "Which one of you is a drinkin' man?"
"It's for making fruitcakes, Mr. Haha. Cooking. "
This sobers him. He frowns. "That's no way to waste good whiskey.”
― Truman Capote, quote from A Christmas Memory
“The buggy is mine; that is, it was bought for me when I was born. It is made of wicker, rather unraveled, and the wheels wobble like a drunkard’s legs. But it is a faithful object; springtimes, we take it to the woods and fill it with flowers, herbs, wild fern for our porch pots; in the summer, we pile it with picnic paraphernalia and sugar-cane fishing poles and roll it down to the edge of a creek;”
― Truman Capote, quote from A Christmas Memory
“Morning. Frozen rime lusters the grass; the sun, round as an orange and orange as hot-weather moons, balances on the horizon, burnishes the silvered winter woods. A wild turkey calls. A renegade hog grunts in the undergrowth.”
― Truman Capote, quote from A Christmas Memory
Truman Capote
Born place: in New Orleans, Louisiana, The United States
Born date September 30, 1924
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“Hem anlatsana bana :
nasıl oluyor da çıldırmıyoruz öleceğimizi bildiğimiz halde?
Yoksa, ben ölmem gibi mi geliyor insana.
Dayım söylüyor :
cephede herkes böyle düşünürmüş,
doğru mu?
Yoksa ölmeye de mi alışıyoruz
ihtiyarlamaya alıştığımız gibi.
Bence bunun sebebi :
herbirimizdeki kısalığına rağmen
yaşamak daha kuvvetli ölümden.”
― Nâzım Hikmet Ran, quote from Human Landscapes from My Country: An Epic Novel in Verse
“But I know human nature, my friend, and I tell you that, suddenly confronted with the possibility of being tried for murder, the most innocent person will lose his head and do the most absurd things.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from Mord im Orientexpress
“I’ve being the operative word there. Nobody is capable of getting through this life alone, James. When your boat is drifting from the shore, it’s okay to use an anchor for support. We all need an anchor. Without people to love us, we’d just drift further and further away.” “What”
― Nicola Haken, quote from Broken
“I drove back home. I missed her already.”
― Durjoy Datta, quote from Our Impossible Love
“All right then," said the savage defiantly, I'm claiming the right to be unhappy."
"Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat, the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind."
There was a long silence.
"I claim them all," said the Savage at last.”
― Aldous Huxley, quote from Uljas uusi maailma
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