Barbara’s studio

* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.

Interviewer:  Can a writer learn style?

Capote:  No, I don’t think that style is consciously arrived at, any more than one arrives at the color of one’s eyes.  After all, your style is you.  At the end the personality of  a writer  has so much to do with the work.  The personality has to be humanly there.  Personality is a debased word, I know, but it’s what I mean.  The writer’s individual humanity, his word or gesture towards the world, has to appear almost like a character that makes contact with the reader.  If the personality is vague or confused or merely literary, ca ne va pas.  Faulkner, Mc Cullers – they project their personality at once.

Truman Capote in Writers at Work:  The Paris Review Interviews First Series, edited, and with an introduction by Malcolm Crowley

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