Quote

Writing stopped being fun when I discovered the difference between good writing and bad and, even more terrifying, the difference between it and true art. And after that, the whip came down.

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
Differences
Whip
Came
Whips
Art
Terrifying
True
Stopped
Writing
Discovered
Even
Scary
Good
Difference
Fun

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Technically I feel total fluidity in writing. I feel there's nothing technically that I can't do the way a certain sort of pianist feels that. But that doesn't mean it comes easily. It doesn't.
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Well, I'm about as tall as a shotgun, and just as noisy.
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When I am writing, I try to do it five hours a day but I spend about two of those just fooling around.
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If you can't be friends with a lover, then forget it. It's not going to work.
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I don't think I've ever drunk champagne before breakfast before. With breakfast on several occasions, but never before before.
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There were hints of sunrise on the rim of the sky, yet it was still dark, and the traces of morning color were like goldfish swimming in ink.
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Great fury, like great whisky, requires long fermentation.
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Let's take everything just as it is.
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You don't run out on people you run out on yourself.
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Wrinkles and bones, white hair and diamonds: I can't wait.
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All artists are two-headed calves.
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Hulga the whole while hollering like a half-slaughtered hog. (Attention, students of literature! Alliteration - have you noticed? - is my least vice.)
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I couldn't understand a sense of unease that multiplied until I could hear my heart beating.
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I'm not a character in any of my books.
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I used to spend all of my time projecting. I was never in the moment. It was always tomorrow or next week or two months from now. That was one of the reasons I always had this sense of anxiety.
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The instant she saw the letter she squinted her eyes and bent her lips in a tough tiny smile that advanced her age immeasurably. Darling, she instructed me, would you reach in the drawer there and give me my purse. A girl doesn't read this sort of thing without her lipstick.
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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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Have you never heard what the wise men say: all of the future exists in the past.
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She was a triumph over ugliness, so often more beguiling than real beauty, if only because it contains paradox. In this case, as opposed to the scrupulous method of good taste and scientific grooming, the trick had been worked by exaggerating defects she'd made them ornamental by admitting them boldly.
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Good luck and believe me, dearest Doc - it's better to look at the sky than live there. Such an empty place so vague. Just a country where the thunder goes and things disappear.
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