Literary Birthday – 30 September – Truman Capote

Truman Capote was born 30 September 1924, and died 25 August 1984.

Truman Capote Quotes On Writing

1. To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it’s about, but the inner music that words make.
2. A conversation is a dialogue, not a monologue. That’s why there are so few good conversations: due to scarcity, two intelligent talkers seldom meet.
3. You can’t blame a writer for what the characters say.
4. Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the back yard and shot it.
5. All literature is gossip.
6. 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.
7. Since each story presents its own technical problems, obviously one can’t generalise about them on a two-times-two-equals-four basis. Finding the right form for your story is simply to realise the most natural way of telling the story.
8. All writing, all art, is an act of faith.
9. My preferred pastimes are conversation, reading, travel, and writing, in that order.
10. 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 was an American author, whose short stories, novels, plays, and non-fiction are recognised literary classics. They include the novella, Breakfast at Tiffany’s and the true crime novel In Cold Blood. His early writing extended the Southern Gothic tradition. He achieved early literary recognition in 1945 when his haunting short story ‘Miriam’ was published in Mademoiselle magazine; the following year it won the O. Henry Memorial Award, the first of four such awards Capote was to receive. His writing and personality made him a high society celebrity, and he was known for his sharp wit and gossip. He is regarded as one of the founders of New Journalism, along with Gay Talese, Hunter S. Thompson, Norman Mailer, Joan Didion, and Tom Wolfe. At least 20 films and television dramas have been produced from Capote novels, stories, and screenplays.

Read: 7 Bits Of Writing Advice From Truman Capote

Source for image: Jack Mitchell, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Truman_Capote_by_Jack_Mitchell.jpg

by Amanda Patterson

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