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Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the back yard and shot it.

Truman Capote

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Truman Capote
Age: 59 †
Born: 1924
Born: September 30
Died: 1984
Died: August 25
Actor
Artist
Author
Autobiographer
Journalist
Novelist
Playwright
Screenwriter
Writer
New Orleans
Louisiana
Truman Streckfus Persons
Truman Garcia Capote
Child
Back
Book
Yard
Children
Finishing
Writing
Yards
Like
Shot
Shots
Took

More quotes by Truman Capote

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Every day is a new day with me. All holds are off. All contracts are forgotten.
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I'd rather have cancer than a dishonest heart. Which isn't being pious. Just practical. Cancer may cool you, but the other's sure to.
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Of many magics, one is watching a beloved sleep: free of eyes and awareness, you for a sweet moment hold the heart of him helpless, he is then all, and however irrationally, you have trusted him to be, man-pure, child-tender.
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I will say only that all a writer has to work with is the material he has gathered as the result of his own endeavor and observations, and he cannot be denied the right to use it. Condemn, but not deny.
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Most secrets should never be told, but especially those that are more menacing to the listener than to the teller.
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Before birth yes, what time was it then? A time like now, and when they were dead, it would be still like now: these trees, that sky, this earth, those acorn seeds, sun and wind, all the same, while they, with dust-turned hearts, change only.
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All writing, all art, is an act of faith. If one tries to contribute to human understanding, how can that be called decadent? It's like saying a declaration of love is an act of decadence. Any work of art, provide it springs from a sincere motivation to further understanding between people, is an act of faith and therefore is an act of love.
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All artists are two-headed calves.
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I don't care what anybody says about me as long as it isn't true.
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There was an American girl, Priscilla Johnson. She worked for U.P. in Moscow. She knew [John] Kennedy, and she met [Lee Harvey] Oswald around the same time I did. But I can tell you some­thing else almost as curious.
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Most contemporary novelists, especially the American and the French, are too subjective, mesmerized by private demons theyre enraptured by their navels and confined by a view that ends with their own toes.
Truman Capote
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Most of life is so dull it is not worth discussing, and it is dull at all ages. When we change our brand of cigarette, move to a new neighborhood, subscribe to a different newspaper, fall in and out of love, we are protesting in ways both frivolous and deep against the not to be diluted dullness of day-to-day living.
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Past certain ages or certain wisdoms it is very difficult to look with wonder it is best done when one is a child after that, and if you are lucky, you will find a bridge of childhood and walk across it.
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I despise people who can't control themselves.
Truman Capote
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There is really no practical help that one can offer: it is a matter of self-discovery, of one's own conviction, or working with one's own work your style is what seems natural to you. It is a long process of discovery, one that never ends. I am working at it, and will be as long as I live.
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That's the question: is truth an illusion, or is illusion truth, or are they essentially the same? Myself, I don't care what anybody says about me as long as it isn't true.
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Are the dead as lonesome as the living?
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We all, sometimes, leave each other there under the skies, and we never understand why.
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Some cities, like wrapped boxes under Christmas trees, conceal unexpected gifts, secret delights. Some cities will always remain wrapped boxes, containers of riddles never to be solved, nor even to be seen by vacationing visitors, or, for that matter, the most inquisitive, persistent travelers.
Truman Capote
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My major regret in life is that my childhood was unnecessarily lonely.
Truman Capote