One of the first big movies I can recall watching when I was around 12 was the utterly classic Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Just the name makes me think of something untouchable and irreplaceable. After that I’d stop and watch it with my mom, my grandma, or by myself whenever I saw it on TV. I feel like everyone has a special place where they hold a movie like that.
Based loosely off the Truman Capote novella of 1958, the 1961 film had slight changes in the plot, but it was no less charming. It portrays the story of a flighty Manhattan socialite vying for a rich husband while befriending an aspiring writer. Obviously Audrey Hepburn cannot be replicated. That goes without saying. But that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy the following quotes from one of the best book-to-movie adaptations we know.
1. “You call yourself a free spirit, a “wild thing,” and you’re terrified somebody’s gonna 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 Somali-land. It’s wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself.”
2. “It may be normal, darling; but I’d rather be natural.”
3. “The answer is good things only happen to you if you’re good. Good? Honest is more what I mean… Be anything but a coward, a pretender, an emotional crook, a whore: I’d rather have cancer than a dishonest heart.”
4. “Anyone who ever gave you confidence, you owe them a lot.”
5. “It’s better to look at the sky than live there. Such an empty place; so vague. Just a country where the thunder goes.”
6. “You can love somebody without it being like that. You keep them a stranger, a stranger who’s a friend.”
7. “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.”
8. “I loved her enough to forget myself, my self pitying despairs, and be content that something she thought happy was going to happen.”
9. “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.”
10. “Reading dreams. That’s what started her walking down the road. Every day she’d walk a little further: a mile, and come home. Two miles, and come home. One day she just kept on.”
11. “I’ll never get used to anything. Anybody that does they might as well be dead.”
12. “You’re wrong. She is a phony. But on the other hand you’re right. She isn’t a phony because she’s a real phony. She believes all this crap she believes. You can’t talk her out of it.”
Featured Image Via Los Angeles Times
