"She would like to give me a bicycle… ‘If only I could, Buddy. 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. Only one of these days I will, Buddy. Locate you a bike. Don’t ask how. Steal it maybe.’"
- A Christmas Memory by Truman Capote
"
‘What do you think? This ought to be the right kind of place for tough guy like you. Garbage cans. Rats galore. Plenty of cat-bums to gang around with. So scram,’ she said, dropping him…
…’I told you. We just met by the river one day: that’s all. Independents, both of us. We never made each other any promises. We never -’ she said, and her voice collapsed, a tic, an invalid whiteness seized her face. The car had paused for a traffic light. Then she had the door open, she was running down the street; and I ran after her.
…she shuddered, she had to grip my arm to stand up: ‘Oh, Jesus God. We did belong to each other. He was mine.’ Then I made her a promise, I said I’d come back and find her cat. ‘I’ll take care of him, too. I promise.’
She smiled: that cheerless new pinch of a smile. ‘But what about me?’ she said, whispered, and shivered again. ‘I’m very scared, Buster. Yes, at last. Because it could go on forever. Not knowing what’s yours until you’re thrown it away. The mean reds, they’re nothing….’
"
- Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote
"Those final weeks, spanning end of summer and the beginning of another autumn, are blurred in memory, perhaps because our understanding of each other had reached that sweet depth where two people communicate more often in silence than in words: an affectionate quietness replaces the tensions, the unrelaxed chatter and chasing about that produce a friendship’s more showy, more, in the surface sense, dramatic moments."
- Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote
"‘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.’"
- Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote
"‘Never love a wild thing, Mr. Bell,’ Holly advised him. ‘That was Doc’s mistake. He was always lugging home wild things. A hawk with a hurt wing. One time it was a full-grown bobcat with a broken leg. But you can’t give your heart to a wild thing; the more you do, the stronger they get. Until they’re strong enough to run into the woods. Or fly into a tree. Then a taller tree. Then the sky. That’s how you’ll end up Mr. Bell. If you let yourself love a wild thing. You’ll end up looking at the sky.’"
- Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote
"‘You know those days when you get the means reds?’
‘Same as the blues?’
‘No,’ she said slowly. ‘No, the blues are because you’re getting fat or maybe it’s been raining too long. You’re sad that’s all. The mean reds are horrible. You’re afraid, and you sweat like hell, but you don’t know what you’re afraid of. Except something bad is going to happen, only you don’t know what it is. You’ve had that feeling?’
‘Quite often. Some people call it angst.’
‘All right. Angst. But what do you do about it?’
‘Well, a drink helps.’
‘I’ve tried that. I’ve tried aspirin, too. Rusty thinks I should smoke marijuana, I did for a while, but it only makes me giggle. What I’ve found does the most good is to just get into a taxi and go to Tiffany’s. It calms me down right away, the quietness and the proud look of it; nothing very bad could happen to you there, not with those kind of men in their nice suits, and that lovely smell of silver and alligator wallets. If I could find a real-life place that made me feel like Tiffany’s, then I’d buy some furniture and give the cat a name."
- Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote
"She was still hugging the cat. “Poor slob,” she said, tickling his head, “poor slob without a name. It’s a little inconvenient, his not having a name. But I haven’t any right to give him one: He’ll have to wait until he belongs to somebody. We just sort of hooked up by the river one day, we don’t belong to each other. He’s an independent, and so am I. I don’t want to own anything until I know I’ve found a place where me and things belong together."
- Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote
"You’re wrong. She is a phony. But on the other hand you’re right. She isn’t a phony because she’s a real phony. She believes all this crap she believes. You can’t talk her out of it."
- Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote
"But there were moments when she played songs that made you wonder where she learned them, where indeed she came from. Harsh-tender wandering tunes with words that smacked of pinewoods or prairie. One went: Don’t wanna sleep, Don’t wanna die, Just wanna go a-travelin’ through the pastures of the sky; and this one seemed to gratify her the most, for often she continued it long after her hair hard dried, after the sun had gone and there were lighted windows in the dusk."
- Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote
