Holly Golightly Quotes

You know the days when you get the mean reds? Paul Varjak: The mean reds. You mean like the blues? Holly Golightly: No. The blues are because you’re getting fat, and maybe it’s been raining too long. You’re just sad, that’s all. The mean reds are horrible. Suddenly you’re afraid, and you don’t know what you’re afraid of. Do you ever get that feeling?

There are certain shades of limelight that can wreck a girl's complexion.

Leave it to me: I'm always top banana in the shock department.

The average personality reshapes frequently, every few years even our bodies undergo a complete overhaul - desirable or not, it is a natural thing that we should change. All right, here were two people who never would change. That is what Mildred Grossman had in common with Holly Golightly. They would never change because they'd been given their character too soon; which, like sudden riches, leads to a lack of proportion: the one had splurged herself into a top-heavy realist, the other a lopsided romantic.

Anyone who ever gave you confidence, you owe them a lot". ~Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany's, 1958, spoken by the character Holly Golightly

Never love a wild thing... 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... . If you let yourself love a wild thing. You'll end up looking at the sky.

A girl doesn't read this sort of thing without her lipstick." -Holly Golightly

You know what's wrong with you, Miss Whoever-You-Are? You're chicken, you've got no guts. You're afraid to stick out your chin and say, "Okay, life's a fact, people do fall in love, people do belong to each other, because that's the only chance anybody's got for real happiness." You call yourself a free spirit, a wild thing, and you're terrified somebody's going to stick you in a cage. Well, baby, you're already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it's not bounded in the west by Tulip, Texas, or in the east by Somaliland. It's wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself.

But, Doc, I'm not fourteen any more, and I'm not Lulamae. But the terrible part is (and I realized it while we were standing there) I am. I'm still stealing turkey eggs and running through a brier patch. Only now I call it having the mean reds.

A person ought to be able to marry men or women... . No, I'm serious. Love should be allowed. I'm all for it. Now that I've got a pretty good idea what it is." - Holly Golightly

I don't want to own anything until I find a place where me and things go together. I'm not sure where that is but I know what it is like. It's like Tiffany's... If I could find a real-life place that made me feel like Tiffany's then-- then I'd buy some furniture and give the cat a name!

I want to still be me when I wake up one fine morning and have breakfast at Tiffany's

Never love a wild thing. 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 if you let yourself love a wild thing. You’ll end up looking at the sky.

Like every fiction, Holly Golightly was a composite of multiple nonfictions.

He would’ve sworn the woman was a reincarnation of Holly Golightly, but this wasn’t a Capote novel, no matter her resemblance to Hepburn.

He calls me his waif, his down-on-her-luck waitress, but he takes it all lightly. In fact, Holly Golightly is one of his names for me. If we lived together I would expose myself as the blighted Jean Rhys character I really am.

Watching her, I remembered a girl I'd known in school, a grind, Mildred Grossman. Mildred: with her moist hair and greasy spectacles, her strained fingers that dissected frogs and carried coffee to picket lines, her flat eyes that only turned toward the stars to estimate their chemical tonnage. Earth and air could not be more opposite than Mildred and Holly, yet in my head they acquired a Siamese twinship, and the thread of thought that had sewn them together ran like this: the average personality reshapes frequently, every few years even our bodies undergo a complete overhaul--desirable or not, it is a natural thing that we should change. All right, here were two people who never would. That is what Mildred Grossman had in common with Holly Golightly. They would never change because they'd been given their character too soon; which, like sudden riches, leads to a lack of proportion: the one had splurged herself into a top-heavy realist, the other a lopsided romantic. I imagined them in a restaurant of the future, Mildred still studying the menu for its nutritional values, Holly still gluttonous for everything on it. It would never be different. They would walk through life and out of it with the same determined step that took small notice of those cliffs at the left.

Она рассеянно посмотрела на меня и потёрла нос, будто он чесался; жест этот, как я впоследствии понял, часто его наблюдая, означал, что собеседник проявляет излишнее любопытство. Как и многих людей, охотно и откровенно о себе рассказывающих, всякий прямой вопрос сразу её настораживал.

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 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 was still 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. It never occurred to me in those days to write about Holly Golightly, and probably it would not now except for a conversation with Joe Bell that set the whole memory of her in motion again.

Successful theft exhilarates.

Depression is hard to understand, because it is not a consistent state. Depression is rather like a virus, but like a virus, it has its manageable days and its acute, life-threatening flare-ups. You can be in a depression and still laugh at a friend’s joke or have a good night at dinner or manage low-level functioning. You grocery shop and stop to pet a puppy on the corner, talk to friends in a café, maybe write something you don’t hate. When this happens, you might examine your day for clues like reading tea leaves in a cup: Was it the egg for breakfast that made the difference? The three-mile run? You think, well, maybe this thing has moved on now. And you make no sudden moves for fear of attracting its abusive attention again. But other times… Other times, it’s as if a hole is opening inside you, wider and wider, pressing against your lungs, pushing your internal organs into unnatural places, and you cannot draw a true breath. You are breaking inside, slowly, and everything that keeps you tethered to your life, all of your normal responses, is being sucked through the hole like an airlock emptying into space. These are the times Holly Golightly called the Mean Reds. I call it White Knuckling it.

They ended up in a amusement arcade on Old Compton Street, where Nora insisted Stephen join her on one of those dance-step machines, and as he stood next to her, stomping out a dance routine on the illuminated dance floor, he had a sudden anxiety that Nora might be one of those kooky, free-spirit types, the kind of irreverent life-force who, in the imaginary romantic comedy currently playing in his head, turns the hero’s narrow life upside down, etc., etc. The acid test for free-spirited kookiness is to show the subject a field of fresh snow; if they flop on their backs and make snow-angels, then the test is positive. In the absence of snow, Stephan resolved to keep an eye open for other tell-tale kookiness indicators: a propensity for wacky hats, zany mismatched socks, leaf-kicking, a disproportionate enthusiasm for karaoke, kite - flying and light-hearted shoplifting, the whole Holly Golightly act.

I've seen this movie more times than I care to admit, can probably recite most of the lines from memory. But the kiss in the rain between Holly Golightly and Paul Varjack, once she finally realizes love isn't such a bad thing, is one of my favorite kisses of all time. So much passion. So much heartbreak. So much hope.

Elle ducked low, peeking inside the carrier. It was difficult to see inside, with Cat tucked up in a tight little ball of dark, fluffy fur and glinting green eyes. “What’s her name?” Olivia blushed. “Cat.” Elle cocked her head, clearly confused. “How long have you had her?” “Um.” She did the math. “Almost eight months.” Elle frowned. “So . . . it’s not just a placeholder? Cat?” Margot huffed out a quiet laugh and Olivia’s stomach somersaulted at the sound. “It’s from Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Holly Golightly names her—well, it isn’t hers, that’s the whole point. She names the cat Cat.” Margot’s lips twitched. “I’m assuming that’s where you got the name.

I hear ding her neglectials to smilined, - 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 fur-niture, a sofa and fat chairs upholstered in that itchy, particular red velvet that one associates with hot days on a train. 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.

but in Claire’s mind it would always be Holly Golightly who stole her daddy. We belong to nobody and nobody belongs to us.

They point to the supposedly strange names of some of her characters, while they praise novels with character names like Milo Minderbinder, Humbert Humbert, and Holly Golightly (and that’s without digging into the oeuvre of Charles Dickens).