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.”

“Writing in the first person automatically gives you a point of view.”

“I also write the last paragraph or page of a story first. That way I always know what I'm working towards.”

“When I'm writing, I never write more than four hours a day.”

“When I am writing, I try to do it five hours a day but I spend about two of those just fooling around.”

“That's all a writer has to write about - what he sees and hears and what not.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil.”

“Failure is the condiment that gives success it's flavour”

“Talent, and genius as well, is like a grain of pearl sand shifting about in the creative mind. A valued tormentor.”

“All literature is gossip.”

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

“Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act.”

“Sometimes when I think how good my book can be, I can hardly breathe.”

“One of the most difficult things in writing a novel or anything at all is to choose the point of view from which it's going to be told.”