Truman Capote Quotes

Every man is crucified upon the cross of himself.

Me writing 'Black Rainbow' was me alone in a windowless room going insane.

You are at the same time arrogant and self-loathing. You are a puzzle. But the ancient truth remains: as the light grows dimmer, things begin to become harder to see. I came to love you in time, but I feared the dark side as well. I still do. You have tremendous potential, potential for joy or hate, light or dark, life or death. But in the end, you choose. What a gift, what a joy to witness.

I hold a beast, an angel, and a madman in me, and my enquiry is as to their working, and my problem is their subjugation and victory, down throw and upheaval, and my effort is their self-expression.

Wholeness is the enemy of the artist. We ought to be broken, ruined in some way.

Writers are doubters, compulsives, self-flagellants. The torture only stops for brief moments.

How did writing come to me? Like bird’s down on my windowpane, in winter. Just then there rose in the heart a struggle of firebrands, which has, still now, not ended.

Fight with yourself when you paint, not with the model. A student is one who struggles with himself for order.

I close my eyes and I take a deep breath and I think about my life and how I ended up this way. I think about the ruin, devastation and wreckage I have caused to myself and to others. I think about self-hatred and self-loathing. I think about how and why and what happened and the thoughts come easily, but the answers don't.

Hence, viper thoughts, that coil around my mind,Reality's dark dream!I turn from you, and listen to the wind,Which long has raved unnoticed.

The ordinary man puts up a struggle against all that is not himself, whereas it is against himself, in a limited but all-essential field, that the artist has to battle.

It takes me awhile to find something that I'm passionate about. I'm reading a lot and thinking a lot, and torturing myself a lot because I'm feeling really guilty for not writing something today.

I walked into my own book, seeking peace. It was night, and I made a careless movement inside the dream; I turned too brusquely the corner and I bruised myself against my madness.

Some of the greatest battles will be fought within the silent chambers of your own soul.

In football you have an adversary; in cinema that adversary is yourself.

I get up in the morning, torture a typewriter until it screams, then stop.

I think, as an artist, you have to have experienced some deep turmoil, some kind of pain, because that's what connects you with the world. That's what makes it juicy!

In terms of the feeling of the piece, I cant think about what people are gonna think about it, what are the critics gonna say, I'm trying to bring some resolution, and realize that myself. It's a struggle; it's a process that gets us this.

The literature of the inner life is very largely a record of struggle with the inordinate passions of the social self.

Working conditions for me have always been those of the monastic life: solitude and frugality. Except for frugality, they are contrary to my nature, so much so that work is a violence I do to myself.

The process of getting conscious, for me, was a very, very uncomfortable, disturbing, and sometimes physically painful process. And so that's the standard to which I write, because it was what I've experienced over my time.

My identity started developing through the songs I was writing.

I can only be the madman that I've been so long.

I've said very openly that the first aspect of my artistry to arrive was writing. It took me a good number of years to find my voice.

To make your life being a writer, it's an auto-slavery ... you are both the slave and the task-master.