Calling Truman Capote - excerpt from 'Conversations With Capote'

Interview, Dec, 1997 by Brad Goldfarb

Q: Do you believe in God, or, at any rate, some higher power?

A: It's not that simple. I did believe in God. And then I didn't. Remember when we were very little and we used to go way out in the woods with our dog Queenie and our old cousin Sook? We hunted for wildflowers. Wild asparagus. We caught butterflies and let them loose. We caught perch and threw them back. in the creek. Sometimes we found giant toadstools, and Seek told us that was where the elves lived, under the beautiful toadstools. She told us the Lord had arranged for everything we saw. The good and the bad. The ants and the mosquitos and the rattlesnakes. Every leaf. The sun in the sky. The old moon and the new moon. Rainy days. And we believed her.

But then things happened to spoil that faith. First it was church and itching all over listening to some ignorant redneck preacher shoot his mouth off; and afterwards it was all those boarding-schools and going to chapel every damn morning; and the Bible itself - nobody with any sense could believe what it asked you to believe. Where were the toadstools? Where were the moons? And at last life, plain living, took away the memories of whatever faith still lingered. I'm not the worst person that's crossed my path, not by a considerable distance; but I've committed some serious sins, deliberate cruelty among them; and it didn't bother me one whit, I never gave it a thought. Until I had to. When the rain started to fall, it was a hard rain, a hard black rain. It just kept falling. And I started to think about God again . . . and to understand that Seek was right, that everything was His design, the old moon and the new moon, the hard rain falling; and if only I would ask Him to help me, He would.

Q: And has he?

A: Yes. More and more. But I'm not a saint yet. I'm an alcoholic. I'm a drug addict. I'm homosexual. I'm a genius. Of course I could be all four of these dubious things and still be a saint. But I shonuf ain't no saint yet, nawsuh.