How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
"I'm very scared, Buster. Yes, at last. Because it could go on forever. Not knowing what's yours until you've thrown it away" (18.18).
Holly has spent her life avoiding anything permanent, but as she heads to the airport she finally admits that this impermanence scares her because she sees no end to it. The idea of transience stretches before her indefinitely.
Quote #2
"I don't. I'll never get used to anything. Anybody that does, they might as well be dead" (3.12).
The idea of staying put feels like a death sentence for Holly. To her, life is about continuing to move and to experience new things. She doesn't believe in staying in one place long enough to get used to it.
Quote #3
I wondered if she'd often stolen. "I used to," she said. "I mean I had to. If I wanted anything. But I still do it every now and then, sort of to keep my hand in" (7.5).
A part of Holly knows that she might have to pick up and go at any moment, and she expects that she might have to struggle to survive. Living her life on the fly permanently affects her day-to-day actions.
Quote #4
She was forever on her way out […] (8.2).
This short passage perfectly sums up Holly's life. She's always on the move, always onto something better.
Quote #5
Holly was not a girl who could keep anything, and surely by now she had lost that medal, left it in a suitcase or some hotel drawer (8.10).
The narrator doesn't count on Holly hanging on to the St. Christopher medal he gives her for Christmas, and this shows us that nothing in Holly's life is permanent. It's not just her geographical location that changes, and it's not just the people who float in and out of her life – she doesn't even hold tight to the sentimental gifts she receives.
Quote #6
One went: Don't wanna sleep, Don't wanna die, Just wanna go a-travelin' through the pastures of the sky; and this one seemed to gratify her the most […] (3.5).
This is one of the songs Holly often sings when she's waiting for her hair to dry. It's pretty significant that it's one of her favorites since it's all about the desire to keep moving, to keep traveling. The singer wants nothing as permanent as sleep or death.
Quote #7
Everything was piled on the floor of my room, a poignant pyramid of brassieres and dancing slippers and pretty things I packed in Holly's only suitcase. There was a mass left over that I had to put in paper grocery bags (18.3).
It just seems kind of fitting that Holly's belongings have to be stuffed in disposable luggage. Even her bags are transient, impermanent.
Quote #8
She hummed to herself, swigged brandy, she leaned constantly forward to peer out the windows, as if she were hunting an address – or, I decided, taking a last impression of a scene she wanted to remember. It was neither of these (18.11).
The narrator wants to believe that Holly wishes to solidify her memories before leaving for Brazil, but this is his desire, not hers. Fixed memories would signify something too permanent for Holly, and this just isn't who she is.
Quote #9
The owner of the brownstone sold her abandoned possessions, the white-satin bed, the tapestry, her precious Gothic chair (19.1).
Holly leaves so most of her (already few) belongings behind when she escapes to South America. She's unencumbered by possessions, and even the things that would suggest a degree of permanence in her life get sold. Her consistent lack of furniture, and of "things" in general, symbolize the transience of her life.
Quote #10
"Then nothing," he shrugged. "By and by she went like she come, rode away on a horse" (1.26).
This is the end of Joe's story about Holly in Africa, but it's in the beginning pages of the novel itself. This passage prepares us for the transience that characterizes Holly for the rest of the narrative. She just comes and goes in Joe's story, just as she does in Capote's.