I have admired big cities for a long time, mainly because I come from a big city myself, sort of. I actually grew up in a large suburban town in Dar es Salaam, the largest city in East Africa, but during the few weekend nights I found myself in the city I would carefully stare at all the people, the chaos and the colorful billboards. Everything made me admire the city and to this day I tell myself that I shall one day live in a big city. My love for big cities grew during my high school days when I had to pass through the city each morning and afternoon. I could make a list and mention other things including Taylor Swift’s Welcome to New York, Owl City’s New York City and basically every DC or Marvel superhero movie ever created that paints the big city as this place where all the action happens. And to be very honest, all the action does happen in the big cities. You have to go and make it happen. Breakfast At Tiffany’s by Truman Capote is just one of many artistic works that prove this.
Miss Holiday ‘Holly’ Golightly is a young New Yorker who makes me say ‘go get it!’ to myself. In Owl City’s New York City he sings, “you never know if you never go” and I think to myself that Holly may have had a conversation like this with herself before she moved to New York. Even though what she “achieved” is not really what many of us think of achieving in this day and age, the fact that she went and became someone (being a “nobody” before) in a big city is enough. Holly, who is the central character, is a controversial one because of her occasional racist remarks that immediately prompted me to cheer when the black police officer slapped her after she said, “Get them cotton-pickin’ hands off of me, you dreary, drivelling old bull-dyke.” We can go around saying it was a different era, but the truth is that Holly is what we call the b-word today. I do, however, admire how she created herself. To me, changing one’s name goes beyond the legal process, which is why I am always interested in those ‘change my name and move to a different city’ jokes in movies and TV. If you do plan on doing it, I recommend you follow Holly’s example, have Holly’s breakfast menu.
Holly knows what she wants and she goes after it even when the odds seem to not be in her favor. Though not explicitly mentioned in the story, you can see how Holly believes in herself; her beauty, mind and her social skills-she doesn’t have anything else. This reminds me of a conversation about optimism I had with some friends a few days ago. I think this is what they meant because looking at my own life and putting myself in Holly’s position I would have definitely never made it to Rio de Janeiro or Buenos Aires or whatever part of Africa she ended up in if I did not have the optimism she had. Young and with an unshakable lust for life, Holly is what we all wish we were. Some of us have probably given up on that vision because of how our modern society is built and many other factors, but as my high school history teacher used to say, “it’s not the end of the world” and we all know you can have breakfast during any time of the day.
Anyway, here are some quotes from Breakfast at Tiffany’s that I loved, hoping you love them too:
They were large eyes, a little blue, a little green, dotted with bits of brown: vari-coloured, like her hair; and, like her hair, they gave out a lively warm light.
“I can’t get excited by a man until he’s forty two.”
“You can beat your brains out for her, and she’ll hand you horses**t on a platter.”
“Even wearing glasses this thick; even when she opens her mouth and you don’t know if she’s a hillbilly or an Okie or what.”
“I want to still be me when I wake up one fine morning and have breakfast at Tiffany’s.”
“I don’t want to own anything until I know I’ve found the place where me and things belong together.”
“I told you: you can make yourself love anybody”
He’d been put together with care, his brown head and bull-fighter’s figure had an exactness, a perfection, like an apple, an orange, something nature has made just right.
“I like a man who sees the humor”
Aprils have never meant much to me, autumns seem that season of beginning, spring; which is how I felt sitting with Holly on the railings of the boathouse porch.
“Everybody has to feel superior to somebody. But it’s customary to present a little proof before you take the privilege.”
“I’m not smirking. I’m smiling. You’re the most amazing person.”
“I suppose I am.”
“Never love a wild thing, Mr. Bell.”
“But 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, Mr Bell. If you let yourself love a wild thing. You’ll end up looking at the sky.”
“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.”
“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.”
So the days, the last days, blow about in memory, hazy, autumnal, all alike as leaves.
I loved her enough to forget myself, my self-pitying despairs, and be content that something she thought happy was going to happen.
“A girl doesn’t read this sort of thing without her lipstick.”
“Anyway, home is where you feel at home. I’m still looking.”
Leave a comment