Truman Capote (September 30th, 1924 – August 25th, 1984) was an American novelist, screenwriter, playwright, and actor. Several of his novels and plays are literary classics.
He was planning to become a writer at eight years old and began his professional career writing short stories. The critical success of “Miriam” in 1945 attracted the attention of Random House publisher. He achieved widespread acclaim with Breakfast at Tiffany’s and the true crime novel In Cold Blood (1966). Capote spent six years writing the latter.
Below we list some words of wisdom by Truman Capote.
“Everybody has to feel superior to somebody,” she said. “But it’s customary to present a little proof before you take the privilege.”
“Life is difficult enough without Meryl Streep movies.”
“It’s a scientific fact that if you stay in California you lose one point of your IQ every year.”
“You can’t blame a writer for what the characters say.”
“Most people don’t find their creativity. There are more unsung geniuses that don’t even know they have great talent.”
“Anyone who ever gave you confidence, you owe them a lot.”
“Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.”
“All human life has its seasons and cycles, and no one’s personal chaos can be permanent. Winter, after all, gives way to spring and summer, though sometimes when branches stay dark and the earth cracks with ice, one thinks they will never come, that spring, and that summer, but they do, and always.”
“I don’t care what anybody says about me as long as it isn’t true.”
“The brain may take advice, but not the heart.”
“Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act.”
“There is only one unpardonable sin–deliberate cruelty. All else can be forgiven.”
“A conversation is a dialogue, not a monologue. That’s why there are so few good conversations: due to scarcity, two intelligent talkers seldom meet.”
“A man who doesn’t dream is like a man who doesn’t sweat. He stores up a lot of poison.”
“If you weren’t here, if you could be anywhere you wanted to be, doing anything you wanted to do, where would you be and what would you be doing?”
“Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.”
“The problem with living outside the law is that you no longer have its protection.”
“Actually, I think friendship and love are exactly the same thing.”
“Have you never heard what the wise men say: all of the future exists in the past.”
“I remember things the way they should have been.”
“Imagination, of course, can open any door – turn the key and let terror walk right in.”
“He loved her, he loved her, and until he’d loved her she had never minded being alone.”
“You call yourself a free spirit, a “wild thing,” and you’re terrified somebody’s gonna stick you in a cage. Well baby, you’re already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it’s not bounded in the west by Tulip, Texas, or in the east by Somali-land. It’s wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself.”
“Sometimes when I think how good my book can be, I can hardly breathe.”
“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.”
“Are the dead as lonesome as the living?”
“Great fury, like great whisky, requires long fermentation.”
“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.”
“To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it’s about, but the inner music that words make.”
“It takes a lot of bad writing to get to a little good writing.”
“Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the back yard and shot it.”
“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.”
“When I am writing, I try to do it five hours a day but I spend about two of those just fooling around.”
“The better the actor, the more stupid he is.”
“How do I look so young? Quite simple: a complete vegetable diet, 12 hours sleep a night, and lots and lots of make-up.”
Copyright © 2026 Stephen Petullo, Scott Petullo
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