William Clark Styron, Jr. was an American novelist and essayist.
Before the publication of his memoir Darkness Visible in 1990, Styron was best known for his novels, which included
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(23 quotes found)
“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 remedy 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
“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.”
“Reading - the best state yet to keep absolute loneliness at bay.”
“Mysteriously and in ways that are totally remote from natural experience, the gray drizzle of horror induced by depression takes on the quality of physical pain.”
“A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted. You should live several lives while reading it.”
“The writer's duty is to keep on writing”
“The pain is unrelenting; one does not abandon, even briefly, one's bed of nails, but is attached to it wherever one goes.”
“It did not occur to me that there would be many difficulties to impede my ambition. . . .”
“The good writing of any age has always been the product of someone's neurosis.”
“Most books, like their authors, are born to die; of only a few books can it be said that death has no dominion over them; they live, and their influence lives forever.”