Quotations part 3 Flashcards
1.Dick’s dad describing him- part 3
An outstanding athlete- always on the first team at school. Baseball! Football! Dick was always the star player. A pretty good student, too, with A marks in several subjects…
2.Dicks father talking about him- part 3
He wanted to on to college… but we couldn’t do it, Plain didn’t have the money. Never have had any money.
3.Description of Perry’s sister, Barbara and the way she felt everyone in her family was fated to lead a bad life
They shared a doom against which virtue was no defence
4.These are both describing Perry’s sister Barbara and her comfortable, respectable life in San Francisco
Midlle class, middle income/ white picket fence
5.Description of Dcik on the beach in Miami
Envy was constantly with him; the enemy was anyone who was someone he wanted to be or who had anything he wanted to have
6.Description of Perry in the launderette after he has returned to Kansas
Things hadn’t changed much. Perry was twenty-odd years older and a hundred punds heavier, and yet his material situation had improved not at all. He was still… an urchin dependent, so to say, on stolen coins
7.Capote describing Dick’s plan to leave Perry, shortly before their arrest
He was like a wife that must be got rid of. And there was but one way to do it; say nothing- just go
8.Perry describing Mr Clutter, shortly before killing him
I didn’t want to harm the man. I thought he was a very nice gentleman. Soft-spoken. I thought so right up to the moment I cut his throat.
9.Perry talking about Dick, shortly before he killed the Clutters
The glory of having everyone at his mercy. That’s what excited him
10.Perry describing looking on the floor of the Clutters for a one dollar coin, shortly before killing them
I thought of that Goddam dollar. The shame. Disgust.
11.Alvin Dewey reflecting on how random the Clutter killing’s were
The crime was a psychological accident, virtually an impersonal act; victims might as well have been killed by lightning
12.Capote describing Alvin Dewey’s view of Perry after hearing his confession
Perry Smith’s life had been no bed of roses but pitiful, an ugly and lonely progress toward one mirage or another
