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Once a thing is set to happen, all you can do is hope it won't. Or will-depending. As long as you live, there’s always something waiting, and even if it’s bad, and you know it's bad, what can you do? You can’t stop living.Truman Capote
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Imagination, of course, can open any door - turn the key and let terror walk right in.Truman Capote
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But if you live your life without feeling and compassion for your fellowman–you are as an animal–'an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth' & happiness & peace of mind is not attained by living thus.Truman Capote
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The walls of the cell fell away, the sky came down, I saw the big yellow bird.Truman Capote
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Sorrow and profound fatigue are at the heart of Dewey's silence. It had been his ambition to learn "exactly what happened in that house that night." Twice now he'd been told, and the two versions were very much alike, the only serious discrepancy being that Hickock attributed all four deaths to Smith, while Smith contended that Hickock had killed the two women. But the confessions, though they answered questions of how and why, failed to satisfy his sense of meaningful design. The crime was a psychological accident, virtually an impersonal act; the victims might as well have been killed by lightning. Except for one thing: they had experienced prolonged terror, they had suffered. And Dewey could not forget their sufferings. Nonetheless, he found it possible to look at the man beside him without anger - with, rather, a measure of sympathy - for Perry Smith's life had been no bed of roses but pitiful, an ugly and lonely progress toward one mirage and then another. Dewey's sympathy, however, was not deep enough to accommodate either forgiveness or mercy. He hoped to see Perry and his partner hanged - hanged back to back.Truman Capote
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Those fellows, they're always crying over killers. Never a thought for the victims.Truman Capote
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Duntz asked Smith, 'Added up, how much money did you get from the Cutters?' 'Between forty and fifty dollars.Truman Capote
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Like the waters of the river, like the motorists on the highway, and like the yellow trains streaking down the Santa Fe tracks, drama, in the shape of exceptional happenings, had never stopped there.Truman Capote
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...he called after her as shedisappeared down the path, a pretty girl in a hurry...Truman Capote
10
Her bedroom window overlooked the garden, and now and then, usually when she was "having a bad spell, " Mr. Helm had seen her stand long hours gazing into the garden, as though what she saw bewitched her. ("When I was a girl, " she had once told a friend, "I was terribly sure trees and flowers were the same as birds or people. That they thought things, and talked among themselves. And we could hear them if we really tried. It was just a matter of emptying your head of all other sounds. Being very quiet and listening very hard. Sometimes I still believe that. But one can never get quiet enough..") .Truman Capote