(1924–1984)
U.S. writer
Truman Capote
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.
The Paris Review Interviews, vol. I (New York: Picador, 2006), 33.
I suppose my superstitiousness could be termed a quirk. I have to add up all numbers: there are some people I never telephone because their number adds up to an unlucky figure. Or I won’t accept a hotel room for the same reason. I will not tolerate the presence of yellow roses—which is sad because they’re my favorite flower. I can’t allow three cigarette butts in the same ashtray. Won’t travel on a plane with two nuns. Won’t begin or end anything on a Friday. It’s endless, the things I can’t and won’t. But I derive some curious comfort from obeying these primitive concepts.
Truman Capote, The Paris Review Interviews, vol. I (New York: Picador, 2006), 33. [Originally published in Issue 16 of The Paris Review, 1957.]
I am a completely horizontal author. I can’t think unless I’m lying down, either in bed or stretched on a couch and with a cigarette and coffee handy. I’ve got to be puffing and sipping. As the afternoon wears on, I shift from coffee to mint tea to sherry to martinis.
The Paris Review Interviews, vol. I (New York: Picador, 2006), 28.
The test of whether or not a writer has divined the natural shape of his story is just this: After reading it, can you imagine it differently, or does it silence your imagination and seem to you absolute and final? As an orange is final. As an orange is something nature has made just right.
The Paris Review Interviews, vol. I (New York: Picador, 2006), 20–21.