Breakfast at Tiffany's (novella) debt to Christopher Isherwood, one of his mentors, in creating the character of Holly Golightly: ""Breakfast at Tiffany's" is in many ways Capote's personal crystallization of Isherwood's Sally Bowles." Truman Capote's aunt, Marie Rudisill notes that Holly is a kindred spirit of Miss Lily Jane Bobbit, the central character of his short story "Children on Their Birthdays". She observes that both characters are "unattached, unconventional wanderers, dreamers in pursuit of some ideal of happiness." Capote himself acknowledged that Golightly was the favorite of his characters. The novella's prose style prompted Norman Mailer to call Capote "the most perfect writer of
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table was known to be a satirical version of Holmes himself. The final installment, "The Poet at the Breakfast Table", focuses on a character referred to as The Master, who advocates modern scientific ideas. The fifteen-year gap between the original "Breakfast-Table" book and its final installment allowed a very different tone which was more mellow and nostalgic than its predecessors. Holmes wrote of it: "As people grow older... they come at length to live so much in memory that they often think with a kind of pleasure of losing their dearest possessions. Nothing can be so perfect while we possess it