Truman Capote Quotes

It's interesting when you're in your thirties and you're not the same pretty boy that you were when you were 21. I think people's anger at themselves getting older is projected on to you because you become a symbol of that.

When a woman confuses what she is with what she wears, then something is wrong inside.

Whatever may be their use in civilized societies, mirrors are essential to all violent and heroic action.

Man shouldn’t be able to see his own face – there’s nothing more sinister. Nature gave him the gift of not being able to see it, and of not being able to stare into his own eyes. Only in the water of rivers and ponds could he look at his face. And the very posture he had to assume was symbolic. He had to bend over, stoop down, to commit the ignominy of beholding himself. The inventor of the mirror poisoned the human heart.

The inventor of the mirror poisoned the human heart.

Do you ever wake up in the morning, look in the mirror and think, something's not accurate?

If the only vision we have of ourselves comes from the social mirror - from the current social paradigm and from the opinions, perceptions, and paradigms of the people around us - our view of ourselves is like the reflection in a crazy mirror room at the carnival.

For I do not exist: there exist but the thousands of mirrors that reflect me.

I mean one of the things about being alone is that you've no people to define yourself off, I mean, people are like all-round mirrors, because let's face it, we don't often see ourselves all round in a mirror anyway, do we.

Hair is about when you're younger. I am my hair.

In a way, you kind of get caught up in whatever image of yourself you think is out there.

I'm always interested in how people, myself included, have ideas of themselves, of how they thought they would be, or of how they want to be seen. And the older you get, the world keeps telling you different things about yourself. And how people either adjust to those things and let go of adolescent notions. Or they dig in deeper.

With a fractured sense of self, we come to depend on what people feed back to us - often mediated through social networks - not what we are. We have complex identities but may become less able to act as a subject - confident in what we really are.

I've basically thought of myself as a writer, whether I was or not.

I'm still figuring out why people would want to look at me. Maybe it's generic beauty, but it's weird to be valued for something I was born with.

Then, at some point, you get identified with certain things.

It's impossible not to constantly adjust the way you look at yourself.

Makeup transforms me. I feel like I'm in disguise when I walk my dog without makeup on.

As a young woman, my own experience of looking at myself in the mirror is something that's plagued me in lots of ways.

I decided to lock myself in. A forced segregation. Sabbatical. A retreat into myself. My selves. Play hide and go seek in the looking-glass. The mirror angled at the foot of my bed. Twisted reflections bouncing off into infinity. Obsessed with my image, the myriad of distored figurines who danced in front of me in rapid succession, every feature exaggerated, every slight imperfection a new delicacy.

You know what keeps me humble? Mirrors!

It is 11 years since I have seen my figure in a glass [mirror]. The last reflection I saw there was so disagreeable I resolved to spare myself such mortification in the future.

There could be no extreme vanity in my recognition of myself, if in fact there could be any at all.

Beauty: "You called me beautiful last night." Beast: "You do not believe me then?" Beauty: "Well - no. Any number of mirrors have told me otherwise." Beast: "You will find no mirrors here, for I cannot bear them: nor any quiet water in ponds. And since I am the only one who sees you, why are you not then beautiful?

But I never looked like that!’ - How do you know? What is the ‘you’ you might or might not look like? Where do you find it - by which morphological or expressive calibration? Where is your authentic body? You are the only one who can never see yourself except as an image; you never see your eyes unless they are dulled by the gaze they rest upon the mirror or the lens (I am interested in seeing my eyes only when they look at you): even and especially for your own body, you are condemned to the repertoire of its images.