Truman Capote Quotes About Writing

Quotes about: Writing

• To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it's about, but the inner music that words make.

  Truman Capote

  Music, Writing, Creativity

  Truman Capote, M. Thomas Inge (1987). “Truman Capote: Conversations”, p.88, Univ. Press of Mississippi

• 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.

  Truman Capote

  Music, Writing, Law

  1974 Interview in Paris Review, Summer.

• 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

  Art, Fun, Writing

• You can't blame a writer for what the characters say.

  Truman Capote

  Writing, Character, Fearless

  Lawrence Grobel, Truman Capote (1985). “Conversations with Capote”, E P Dutton

• I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil.

  Truman Capote

  Believe, Writing, Editing

  Lawrence Grobel, Truman Capote (1986). “Conversations with Capote”, Plume

• Good writing is rewriting.

  Truman Capote

  Writing, Rewriting, Good Writing

• All writing, all art, is an act of faith. If one tries to contribute to human understanding, how can that be called decadent? It's like saying a declaration of love is an act of decadence. Any work of art, provide it springs from a sincere motivation to further understanding between people, is an act of faith and therefore is an act of love.

  Truman Capote

  Art, Motivation, Spring

  Truman Capote, M. Thomas Inge (1987). “Truman Capote: Conversations”, p.19, Univ. Press of Mississippi

• I like to talk on TV about those things that aren't worth writing about.

  Truman Capote

  Writing, Tvs

• Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the back yard and shot it.

  Truman Capote

  Children, Book, Writing

• When seriously explored, the short story seems to me the most difficult and disciplining form of prose writing extant. Whatever control and technique I may have I owe entirely to my training in this medium.

  Truman Capote

  Writing, Insightful, Training

  " Truman Capote's previously unknown boyhood tales published" by Philip Oltermann, www.theguardian.com. October 9, 2014.

• That's not writing, that's typing

  Truman Capote

  Art, Writing, Entertainment

  Lawrence Grobel, Truman Capote (1985). “Conversations with Capote”, E P Dutton

• I am a completely horizontal author. I can't think unless I'm lying down, either in bed or stretched on a couch.

  Truman Capote

  Lying, Writing, Thinking

  Truman Capote, M. Thomas Inge (1987). “Truman Capote: Conversations”, p.28, Univ. Press of Mississippi

• That isn't writing at all, it's typing.

  Truman Capote

  Writing, Typing

  Quoted in New Republic, 9 Feb. 1959

• I always felt that nobody was going to understand me, going to understand what I felt about things. I guess that's why I started writing. At least on paper I could put down what I thought.

  Truman Capote

  Writing, Paper, Understand Me

• There is really no practical help that one can offer: it is a matter of self-discovery, of one's own conviction, or working with one's own work; your style is what seems natural to you. It is a long process of discovery, one that never ends. I am working at it, and will be as long as I live.

  Truman Capote

  Writing, Discovery, Self

  "Too Brief a Treat: The Letters of Truman Capote".

• I think the only person a writer has an obligation to is himself. If what I write doesn't fulfill something in me, if I don't honestly feel it's the best I can do, then I'm miserable.

  Truman Capote

  Writing, Thinking, Miserable

  Truman Capote, M. Thomas Inge (1987). “Truman Capote: Conversations”, p.43, Univ. Press of Mississippi

• It's a very excruciating life facing that blank piece of paper every day and having to reach up somewhere into the clouds and bring something down out of them.

  Truman Capote

  Writing, Clouds, Pieces

  Lawrence Grobel, Truman Capote (1986). “Conversations with Capote”, Plume

• I got this idea of doing a really serious big work-it would be precisely like a novel, with a single difference: Every word of it would be true from beginning to end.

  Truman Capote

  Fake People, Writing, Reality

  Truman Capote, M. Thomas Inge (1987). “Truman Capote: Conversations”, p.70, Univ. Press of Mississippi

• I think of myself as a stylist, and stylists can become notoriously obsessed with the placing of a comma, the weight of a semicolon.

  Truman Capote

  Writing, Thinking, Weight

  Truman Capote, M. Thomas Inge (1987). “Truman Capote: Conversations”, p.28, Univ. Press of Mississippi

• I don't use a typewriter, I write longhand, with a pencil. Essentially I'm a horizontal writer. I think better when I'm lying down.

  Truman Capote

  Lying, Writing, Thinking

• If you happen to capture my imagination for some reason and I decide to write about you and you don't like what I wrote about you, which is entirely possible, then yes, I'm a dangerous writer.

  Truman Capote

  Writing, Imagination, Reason

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• One day, I started writing, not knowing that I had chained myself for life to a noble but merciless master. When God hands you a gift, he also hands you a whip; and the whip is intended solely for self-flagellation... I'm here alone in my dark madness, all by myself with my deck of cards - and, of course, the whip God gave me.

  Truman Capote

  Writing, Dark, Self

• 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.

  Truman Capote

  Mean, Writing, Fluidity

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• It takes a lot of bad writing to get to a little good writing.

  Truman Capote

  Writing, Littles, Bad Writing

• Never demean yourself by talking back to a critic, never. Write those letters to the editor in your head, but don't put them on paper.

  Truman Capote

  Writing, Talking, Editors

  Truman Capote, M. Thomas Inge (1987). “Truman Capote: Conversations”, p.31, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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