William Styron (1925–2006) was an American novelist and essayist who won major literary awards for his work.
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The madness of depression is the antithesis of violence. It is a storm indeed, but a storm of murk. Soon evident are the slowed-down responses, near paralysis, psychic energy throttled back close to zero. Ultimately, the body is affected and feels sapped, drained.
—William Styron
Topics: Depression
The stigma of self-inflicted death is for some people a hateful blot that demands erasure at all costs.
—William Styron
Topics: Suicide
Every writer since the beginning of time, just like other people, has been afflicted by what [a] friend of mine calls “the fleas of life”-you know, colds, hangovers, bills, sprained ankles and little nuisances of one sort or another.
—William Styron
Topics: Writers, Authors & Writing
Mysteriously and in ways that are totally remote from normal experience, the gray drizzle of horror induced by depression takes on the quality of physical pain … it is entirely natural that the victim begins to think ceaselessly of oblivion.
—William Styron
Topics: Depression
In depression…faith in deliverance, in ultimate restoration, is absent. The pain is unrelenting, and what makes the condition intolerable is the foreknowledge that no rememdy will come, not in a day, an hour, a month, or a minute. It is hopelessness even more than pain that crushes the soul.
—William Styron
Topics: Depression
The good writing of any age has always been the product of someone’s neurosis, and we’d have a mighty dull literature if all the writers that came along were a bunch of happy chuckleheads.
—William Styron
Topics: Authors & Writing, Writing
We would have to settle for the elegant goal of becoming ourselves.
—William Styron
Topics: Acceptance, Expectations, Awareness, Being Ourselves, Realistic Expectations, Realization
I’m simply the happiest, the placidest, when I’m writing, and so I suppose that that, for me, is the final answer. … It’s fine therapy for people who are perpetually scared of nameless threats as I am most of the time.
—William Styron
Topics: Authors & Writing
A great book should leave you with many experiences and slightly exhausted at the end. You should live several lives while reading it.
—William Styron
Topics: Reading, Book, Books
I get a fine warm feeling when I’m doing well, but that pleasure is pretty much negated by the pain of getting started each day. Let’s face it, writing is hell.
—William Styron
Topics: Authors & Writing
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