Breakfast at Tiffany's

I really liked "Breakfast at Tiffany's". There are some big differences between the novella and the movie, but they are all for the better. I wish the studio had the guts (and the legal ability) to touch some of the subjects the book dwells on, but alas, the early '60s in Hollywood were much more conservative than Capote was in the '50s.

The two short stories that followed the novella, "House of Leaves" and "A Diamond Guitar" didn't seem as accomplished to me, but the last one "A Christmas Memory" really hit it out of the park. Maybe because it was somewhat autobiographical, it really got under my skin.

"...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."

"Years from now, years and years, one of those ships will bring me back, me and my nine brazilian brats. Because yes, they must see this, these lights, the river–– 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."

I discovered, from observing the trash-basket outside her door, that her regular reading consisted of tabloids and travel folders and astrological charts; that she smoked an esoteric cigarette called Picayunes; survived on cottage-cheese and melba toast; that her vari-colored hair was somewhat self-induced. The same source made it evident that she received V-letters by the bale. They were always torn into strips like bookmarks. I used occasionally to pluck a bookmark in passing. Remember and miss you and rain and please write and damn and goddamn were the words that recurred most often on these slips; those, and lonesome and love.