Infamous

Marella Agnelli:
So you think your book is worth a human life?

Truman Capote:
When you're talking to them, they seem like perfectly nice boys. To be frank, I'm much more concerned for my safety around Norman Mailer.

Gore Vidal:
[on Truman's voice] To the lucky person who has never heard it, I can only say: imagine what a brussel sprout would sound like, if a brussel sprout could talk.

Slim Keith:
[of Truman's lover Jack] He has the social graces of a syringe.

Diana Vreeland:
You can forgive a person a lot who really *enjoys* you.

D.A.'s Secretary:
I'm sorry. The D.A. doesn't take calls from strange women.

Truman Capote:
Who says I'm strange?

[about the Kansas townspeople]

Truman Capote:
Do you think everyone keeps calling me "lady" to be mean, or can they honestly not tell?

Nelle Harper Lee:
America is not a country where the small gesture goes noticed. We're not a country like France, where charm -- something light or effervescent -- can survive. We want everything you have, and we want it as fast as you can turn it out.

Diana Vreeland:
Here's a word I loathe: eccentric. Eccentric is a word that boring people use to describe someone I think of as interesting. A great many people think of me as eccentric simply because when I have my shoes polished, I have the entire shoe polished. Top, sides and soles. Some people think it eccentric that every morning I have my maid iron my money. When I told Truman I had my maid iron my money, you know what he said? Here's what he didn't say: "How eccentric." Here's what he did say: "How wonderful."

Truman Capote:
The only way to deal with vulgarity is to rise above it.

Perry Smith:
...I am not a character. I'm a human-f***ing-being.

Truman Capote:
Imagine being told your work lacked kindness by a four-time killer!

Truman Capote:
Artists have the power, through our imagination to escape and degenerate world and create a better one.

Perry Smith:
What is punishment? Being in jail isn't punishment, if you didn't like it on the outside. And neither is death, if it was painful to live.