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Holly Golightly (Lulamae)
Joe Bell is a bartender who falls in love with Holly Golightly. An irritable man with a sour stomach, he serves the narrator and Holly whenever they come into his bar. Years after Holly flees the U.S. to avoid a prison sentence, Joe contacts the narrator and tells him to come to the bar. When he arrives, Joe shows him a picture taken by I. Y. Yunioshi, one of the other tenants in Holly’s building. The photo is of a woodcarving that looks exactly like Holly, and Joe relates the story of the picture to the narrator, saying that Yunioshi was traveling in Africa when he saw this carving and asked the sculptor about it. The sculptor told him that a woman came to the village with two fevered men and asked to stay there until the men recovered. For several weeks, then, the woman stayed with the sculptor, developing a romantic relationship with him, which is why he made the carving of her. Joe Bell, for his part, is hesitant to believe that Holly would actually sleep with the sculptor, though both he and the narrator agree that the story could be true. Joe then reveals that he’s in love with Holly and is always looking for her in the streets, hopeful that she’ll return. He misses her dearly, though he helped her flee the country by calling a limo to the airport when she left—something he didn’t want to do, though he couldn’t resist helping her.
Joe Bell Quotes in Breakfast at Tiffany’s
The Breakfast at Tiffany’s quotes below are all either spoken by Joe Bell or refer to Joe Bell. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Breakfast at Tiffany’s Quotes
“And I swear, it never crossed my mind about Holly. You can love somebody without it being like that. You keep them a stranger, a stranger who’s a friend.”
Two men came into the bar, and it seemed the moment to leave. Joe Bell followed me to the door. He caught my wrist again. “Do you believe it?”
“That you didn’t want to touch her? ”
“I mean about Africa.”
At that moment I couldn’t seem to remember the story, only the image of her riding away on a horse. “Anyway, she’s gone.”
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“Never love a wild thing, Mr. Bell," Holly advised him. “That was Doc’s mistake. He was always lugging home wild things. A hawk with a hurt wing. One time it was a full-grown bobcat with a broken leg. 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.”
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“Good luck: and believe me […]: 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.”
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Joe Bell Character Timeline in Breakfast at Tiffany’s
The timeline below shows where the character Joe Bell appears in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
...Golightly. In fact, he might never have written about her if it hadn’t been for Joe Bell, the owner of a bar that the narrator and Holly used to frequent. Years...
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Joe Bell makes the narrator a strong drink and tells him that a photographer named Mr....
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Finishing his story, Joe Bell notes that he doesn’t believe Holly would really have slept with the woodcarver, though...
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The narrator says he didn’t know Joe Bell was in love with Holly, and this comment unsettles Joe, who focuses on putting...
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The narrator and Holly drink Manhattans at Joe Bell’s, then have lunch in Central Park, stopping by the zoo on their way out,...
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The next morning, Holly and the narrator drink at Joe Bell’s. She tells him she never divorced Doc because the marriage must not have been...
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Turning to Joe Bell, Holly tells him never to love a “wild thing,” which she believes was Doc’s...
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...she says she has no friends. After he points out that she has him and Joe Bell and Sally Tomato, she admits that she will indeed miss Sally, though she hasn’t...
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That night, Joe Bell visits the narrator and asks if he thinks it’s true that Holly was mixed...
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...still be unhealthy after her miscarriage). After going straight to the bank, she heads to Joe Bell’s bar, knowing it’d be unwise to return to her apartment, which is under surveillance....
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Despite Joe’s disapproval, he calls a limo to take Holly to the airport, unable to resist showing...
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