Quotes

It's a scientific fact ... For every year a person lives in Hollywood, they lose two points of their IQ.

I think I've written one masterpiece in my career and that's "In Cold Blood". It is a masterpiece and I don't care what anyone says. I think I've also written three or four short stories that are as good as anything written in the English language.

The greatest thing about masturbation is that you don't have to dress up for it.

[on Meryl Streep] She looks like a chicken!

[on Marilyn Monroe] She is pure Alice in Wonderland, and her appearance and demeanor are a nicely judged mix of the Red Queen and a flamingo.

New York is a diamond iceberg floating in river water.

[on Marlon Brando] No actor of my generation has possessed greater natural gifts; but none other has transported intellectual falsity to higher levels of hilarious pretension.

[on Humphrey Bogart] He had an image of sophisticated virility and he projected it remarkably well. And with such humor. At last, he had such style that it doesn't wither, it doesn't age, it doesn't date. Like Billie Holiday.

Do you want to know the real reason why I push my hair down on my forehead? Because I have two cowlicks. If I didn't do that it would make me look as though I had two feathery horns.

I don't care what anybody says about me, as long as it isn't true.

"'I thought writers were quite old. Of course William Saroyan isn't old. I met him at a party, and really he isn't old at all. In fact, " she mused, 'if he'd give himself a closer shave...by the way, is Hemingway old?'" [Holly Golightly in Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's]

[on Marlon Brando, 1957] He looked at people with assurance, and with what can only be called a pitying expression, as though he dwelt in spheres of enlightenment where they, to his regret, did not.

What will ever become of Truman Capote? He will probably die from mixing booze and pills.

[speaking in 1979] I like rich people because they aren't always trying to borrow something from me.