something about a human archive

I remembered a girl who thought of herself as scribblings on scraps of paper. Notes made here and there—notes that are only briefly relevant. When those notes are rediscovered after a time, they don't make sense anymore, and it is best to throw them away.

something about Truman Capote's novella, "Breakfast at Tiffany's"

In Truman Capote's classic novella, "Breakfast at Tiffany's," Holly Golightly often appears to be a mean, awful person. But she cries on Fred's shoulder the first time they meet. We quickly see that Holly is a contradiction, a "real phony." She feigns an aloof, carefree attitude to protect herself from rejection; she acts refined and educated to disguise the fact that she comes from extreme poverty. She is very vulnerable, which makes her very dangerous.

Capote is a sentimental literary genius because he knows how to cut edges around his open heart. During a crucial, heart-wrenching scene in which Holly reunites with her pitifully naive first husband, Doc, Capote inserts a scream from Holly's upstairs neighbor: "Shut up! It's a disgrace. Do your whoring elsewhere."

This novella's many wonderful lines include the following:

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.

And

So the days, the last days, blow about in memory, hazy, autumnal, all alike as leaves: until a day unlike any other I've lived.