I am always drawn back to places where I have lived, the houses
and their neighborhoods. For instance, there is a brownstone
in the East Seventies where, during the early years of the war,
I had my first New York apartment. It was one room crowded with
attic furniture, a sofa and fat chairs upholstered in that itchy,
particular red velvet that one associates with hot days on a
tram. The walls were stucco, and a color rather like tobacco-spit.
Everywhere, in the bathroom too, there were prints of Roman
ruins freckled brown with age. The single window looked out
on a fire escape. Even so, my spirits heightened whenever I
felt in my pocket the key to this apartment; with all its gloom,
it still was a place of my own, the first, and my books were
there, and jars of pencils to sharpen, everything I needed,
so I felt, to become the writer I wanted to be.
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Opening lines from unnamed narrator, referred
to as Buster by Holly Golightly. |
Maybe the older you grow and the less easy it is to put thought
into action, maybe that's why it gets all locked up in your
head and becomes a burden.
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Joe Bell the bartender. |
I'll never get used to anything. Anybody that does, they might
as well be dead.
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Holly Golightly. |
Of course people couldn't help but think I must be a bit of
a dyke myself. And of course I am. Everyone is: a bit. So what?
That never discouraged a man yet, in fact it seems to goad them
on.
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Holly. |
A disquieting loneliness came into my life, but it induced
no hunger for friends of longer acquaintance: they seemed now
like a salt-free, sugarless diet.
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Narrator. |
I knew damn well I would never be a movie star. It's too hard;
and if you are intelligent, it's too embarrassing. My complexes
aren't inferior enough: being a movie star and having a big
fat ego are supposed to go hand-in-hand; actually, it's essential
not to have any ego at all. I don't mean I'd mind being rich
and famous. That's very much on my schedule, and someday I'll
try and get around to it; but if it happens, I'd like to have
my ego, tagging along. I want to still be me when I wake up
one fine morning and have breakfast at Tiffany's.
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Holly. |
She was still hugging the cat. "Poor slob," she
said, tickling his head, "poor slob without a name. It's
a little inconvenient, his not having a name. But I haven't
any right to give him one: he'll have to wait until he belongs
to somebody. We just sort of took up by the river one day, we
don't belong to each other: he's an independent, and so am I.
I don't want to own anything until I know I've found the place
where me and things belong together. I'm not quite sure where
that is just yet. But I know what it's like." She smiled,
and let the cat drop to the floor. "It's like Tiffany's,"
she said.
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Holly. |
I don't want to own anything until I know I've found the place
where me and things belong together. I'm not quite sure where
that is just yet. But I know what it's like.... It's like Tiffany's....
Not that I give a hoot about jewelry. Diamonds, yes. But it's
tacky to wear diamonds before you're forty.
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Holly. |
You know those days when you've got the mean reds.... the
blues are because you're getting fat or maybe it's been raining
too long. You're sad, that's all. But the mean reds are horrible.
You're afraid and you sweat like hell, but you don't know what
you're afraid of. Except something bad is going to happen, only
you don't know what it is.
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Holly. |
What I found does the most good is just to get into a taxi
and go to Tiffany's. It calms me down right away, the quietness
and the proud look of it; nothing very bad could happen to you
there, not with those kind men in their nice suits, and that
lovely smell of silver and alligator wallets. If I could find
a real-life place that made me feel like Tiffany's, then I'd
buy some furniture and give the cat a name.
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Holly. |
She was a triumph over ugliness, so often more beguiling than
real beauty, if only because it contains paradox. In this case,
as opposed to the scrupulous method of plain good taste and
scientific grooming, the trick had been worked by exaggerating
defects; she'd made them ornamental by admitting them boldly.
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Of Mag Wildwood. |
I'm always top banana in the shock department.
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Holly. |
Anyone who ever gave you confidence, you owe them a lot.
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Holly. |
"Never love a wild thing, Mr. Bell," Holly advised
him. "That was Doc's mistake. He was always lugging home
wild things. A hawk with a hurt wing. One time it was a full-grown
bobcat with a broken leg. But you can't give your heart to a
wild thing: the more you do, the stronger they get. Until they're
strong enough to run into the woods. Or fly into a tree. Then
a taller tree. Then the sky. That's how you'll end up, Mr. Bell.
If you let yourself love a wild thing. You'll end up looking
at the sky."
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Holly to Joe Bell. |
It's better to look at the sky than live there. Such an empty
place; so vague. Just a country where the thunder goes and things
disappear.
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Holly. |
The army of wrongness rampant in the world might as well march
over me.
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Narrator. |
Love should be allowed. I’m all for it. Now that I’ve
got a pretty good idea what it is.
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Holly. |
I love new york, even though it isn't mine, the way something
has to be, a tree or a street or a house, something, anyway,
that belongs to me because i belong to it.
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Holly. |
I loved her enough to forget myself, my self pitying despairs,
and be content that something she thought happy was going to
happen.
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Holly. |
Would you reach in the drawer there and give me my purse.
A girl doesn't read this sort of thing without her lipstick.
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Holly. |
Certain shades of limelight wreck a girl's complexion.
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Holly. |
I'm very scared, Buster. Yes, at last. Because it could go
on forever. Not knowing what's yours until you've thrown it
away.
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Holly. |
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