Quotes from In Cold Blood

“The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call “out there.”
― Truman Capote, quote from In Cold Blood

“It is no shame to have a dirty face- the shame comes when you keep it dirty.”
― Truman Capote, quote from In Cold Blood

“As long as you live, there's always something waiting; and even if it's bad, and you know it's bad, what can you do? You can't stop living.”
― Truman Capote, quote from In Cold Blood

“Just remember: If one bird carried every grain of sand, grain by grain, across the ocean, by the time he got them all on the other side, that would only be the beginning of eternity. ”
― Truman Capote, quote from In Cold Blood

“Imagination, of course, can open any door - turn the key and let terror walk right in.”
― Truman Capote, quote from In Cold Blood

“You are a man of extreme passion, a hungry man not quite sure where his appetite lies, a deeply frustrated man striving to project his individuality against a backdrop of rigid conformity. You exist in a half-world suspended between two superstructures, one self-expression and the other self-destruction. You are strong, but there is a flaw in your strength, and unless you learn to control it the flaw will prove stronger than your strength and defeat you. The flaw? Explosive emotional reaction out of all proportion to the occasion. Why? Why this unreasonable anger at the sight of others who are happy or content, this growing contempt for people and the desire to hurt them? All right, you think they're fools, you despise them because their morals, their happiness is the source of your frustration and resentment. But these are dreadful enemies you carry within yourself--in time destructive as bullets. Mercifully, a bullet kills its victim. This other bacteria, permitted to age, does not kill a man but leaves in its wake the hulk of a creature torn and twisted; there is still fire within his being but it is kept alive by casting upon it faggots of scorn and hate. He may successfully accumulate, but he does not accumulate success, for he is his own enemy and is kept from truly enjoying his achievements.”
― Truman Capote, quote from In Cold Blood

“I thought that Mr. Clutter was a very nice gentleman. I thought so right up to the moment that I cut his throat.”
― Truman Capote, quote from In Cold Blood

“I despise people who can't control themselves.”
― Truman Capote, quote from In Cold Blood

“I've tried to believe, but I don't, I can't, and there's no use pretending.”
― Truman Capote, quote from In Cold Blood

“It is easy to ignore the rain if you have a raincoat”
― Truman Capote, quote from In Cold Blood

“The enemy was anyone who was someone he wanted to be or who had anything he wanted to have.”
― Truman Capote, quote from In Cold Blood

“There’s got to be something wrong with us. To do what we did. ”
― Truman Capote, quote from In Cold Blood

“Those fellows, they're always crying over killers. Never a thought for the victims.”
― Truman Capote, quote from In Cold Blood

“There is considerable hypocrisy in conventionalism. Any thinking person is aware of this paradox; but in dealing with conventional people it is advantageous to treat them as though they were not hypocrites. It isn't a question of faithfulness to your own concepts; it is a matter of compromise so that you can remain an individual without the constant threat of conventional pressures.”
― Truman Capote, quote from In Cold Blood

“Her bedroom window overlooked the garden, and now and then, usually when she was "having a bad spell," Mr. Helm had seen her stand long hours gazing into the garden, as though what she saw bewitched her. ("When I was a girl," she had once told a friend, "I was terribly sure trees and flowers were the same as birds or people. That they thought things, and talked among themselves. And we could hear them if we really tried. It was just a matter of emptying your head of all other sounds. Being very quiet and listening very hard. Sometimes I still believe that. But one can never get quiet enough...")”
― Truman Capote, quote from In Cold Blood

“Then starting home, he walked toward the trees, and under them, leaving behind him the big sky, the whisper of wind voices in the wind-bent wheat.”
― Truman Capote, quote from In Cold Blood

“Like the waters of the river, like the motorists on the highway, and like the yellow trains streaking down the Santa Fe tracks, drama, in the shape of exceptional happenings, had never stopped there.”
― Truman Capote, quote from In Cold Blood

“I believe in hanging. Just so long as I'm not the one being hanged.”
― Truman Capote, quote from In Cold Blood

“You want not to give a damn, to exist without responsibility, without faith or friends or warmth.”
― Truman Capote, quote from In Cold Blood

“Two features in his personality make-up stand out as particularly pathological. The first is his ‘paranoid’ orientation toward the world. He is suspicious and distrustful of others, tends to feel that others discriminate against him, and feels that others are unfair to him and do not understand him. He is overly sensitive to criticism that others make of him, and cannot tolerate being made fun of. He is quick to sense slight or insult in things others say, and frequently may misinterpret well-meant communications. He feels the great need of friendship and understanding, but he is reluctant to confide in others, and when he does, expects to be misunderstood or even betrayed. In evaluating the intentions and feelings of others, his ability to separate the real situation from his own mental projections is very poor. He not infrequently groups all people together as being hypocritical, hostile, and deserving of whatever he is able to do to them. Akin to this first trait is the second, an ever -present, poorly controlled rage--- easily triggered by any feelings of being tricked, slighted, or labeled inferior by others. For the most part, his rages in the past have been directed at authority figures (297).”
― Truman Capote, quote from In Cold Blood

“They shared a doom against which virtue was no defense”
― Truman Capote, quote from In Cold Blood

“Imagination, of course, can open any door—turn the key and let terror walk right in.”
― Truman Capote, quote from In Cold Blood

“The walls of the cell fell away, the sky came down, I saw the big yellow bird.”
― Truman Capote, quote from In Cold Blood

“One day she told the class, ‘Nancy Clutter is always in a hurry, but she always has time. And that’s one definition of a lady.’ ”
― Truman Capote, quote from In Cold Blood

“Time rarely weighed upon him, for he had many methods of passing it.”
― Truman Capote, quote from In Cold Blood

“The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call ‘out there.’ . . .The land is flat, the views are awesomely extensive; horses, herds of cattle, a white cluster of grain elevators rising as gracefully as Greek temples are visible long before a traveler reaches them.”
― Truman Capote, quote from In Cold Blood

“In school we only learn to recognize the words and to spell but the application of these words to real life is another thing that only life and living can give us.”
― Truman Capote, quote from In Cold Blood

“Sorrow and profound fatigue are at the heart of Dewey's silence. It had been his ambition to learn "exactly what happened in that house that night." Twice now he'd been told, and the two versions were very much alike, the only serious discrepancy being that Hickock attributed all four deaths to Smith, while Smith contended that Hickock had killed the two women. But the confessions, though they answered
questions of how and why, failed to satisfy his sense of meaningful design. The crime was a psychological accident, virtually an impersonal act; the victims might as well have been killed by lightning. Except for one thing: they had experienced prolonged terror, they had suffered. And Dewey could not forget their sufferings. Nonetheless, he found it possible to look at the man beside him without anger - with, rather, a measure of sympathy - for Perry Smith's life had been no bed of roses but pitiful, an ugly and lonely progress toward one mirage and then another. Dewey's sympathy, however, was not deep enough to accommodate either forgiveness or mercy. He hoped to see Perry and his partner hanged - hanged back to back.”
― Truman Capote, quote from In Cold Blood

“A sensible question, as Mrs. Clare, an admirer of logic, though a curious interpreter of it, was driven to admit.”
― Truman Capote, quote from In Cold Blood

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Popular quotes

“(...) You Sophotechs are smarter than I am; why did you let me do such a foolish thing?”

“We answer every question our resources and instruction parameters allow; we are more than happy to advise you, when and if we are asked.”

“That’s not what I’m thinking of, and you know it.”

“You are thinking we should use force to defend you against yourself against your will? That is hardly a thought worth thinking, sir. Your life has exactly the value you yourself place on it. It is yours to damage or ruin as you wish.”
(...)
“Is that another hint? Are you saying I’m destroying my life? People at the party, twice now, have said or implied that I’m going to endanger the Oecumene itself. Who stopped me?”

“Not I. While life continues, it cannot be made to be without risk. The assessment of whether or not a certain risk is worth taking depends on subjective value-judgments. About such judgments even reasonable men can differ. We Sophotechs will not interfere with such decisions. (...) If we were to overrule your ownership of your own life, your life, would, in effect, become our property, and you, in effect, would become merely the custodian or trustee of that life. Do you think you would value it more in such a case, or less? And if you valued it less, would you not take greater risks and behave more self-destructively? If, on the other hand, each man’s life is his own, he may experiment freely, risking only what is his, till he find his best happiness.”

“I see the results of failed experiments all around us, in these cylinders. I see wasted lives, and people trapped in mind sets and life forms which lead nowhere.”

“While life continues, experimentation and evolution must also. The pain and risk of failure cannot be eliminated. The most we can do is maximize human freedom, so that no man is forced to pay for another man’s mistakes, so that the pain of failure falls only on he who risks it. And you do not know which ways of life lead nowhere. Even we Sophotechs do not know where all paths lead.”

“How benevolent of you! We will always be free to be stupid.”

“Cherish that freedom, young master; it is basic to all others.”
― quote from The Golden Age

“Like I got intimately acquainted with a meat grinder.”
― Shelly Crane, quote from Independence

“My sparrow, she flickers and wakes and sings and sings. ”
― Lisa Ann Sandell, quote from Song of the Sparrow

“She looked angelic in sleep, dark lashes resting against pale cheeks. Her blond hair was tousled and in disarray and spread out. Over his pillow. He frowned. She'd even stolen his pillow.”
― Maya Banks, quote from Never Seduce a Scot

“Then don't you dare tell me my dreams are insane! Because my dreams are what I live for!”
― Robert Thier, quote from Storm and Silence

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