William Styron Quotes (27 Quotes)

At Dachau. We had a wonderful pool for the garrison children. It was even heated. But that was before we were transferred. Dachau was ever so much nicer than Auschwitz. But then, it was in the Reich. See my trophies there. The one in the middle, the big one. That was presented to me by the Reich Youth Leader himself, Baldur von Schirach. Let me show you my scrapbook.

This was not judgment day - only morning. Morning: excellent and fair.

To make matters worse, I was out of a job and had very little money and was self-exiled to Flatbush-like others of my countrymen, another lean and lonesome Southerner wandering amid the Kingdom of the Jews.

A good book should leave you... slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading it.

Let's face it, writing is hell.

The writer's duty is to keep on writing.

The good writing of any age has always been the product of someone's neurosis.

Basically it is a very politically incorrect book written by a white man trying to seize his own interpretation and put it into the soul and heart of a black man.

In America there seems to be an idea that writing is one big cat-and-dog fight between the various parishioners of the craft.

Writing is a fine therapy for people who are perpetually scared of nameless threats... for jittery people.

I think it's unfortunate to have critics for friends.

In Vineyard Haven, on Martha's Vineyard, mostly I love the soft collision here of harbor and shore, the subtly haunting briny quality that all small towns have when they are situated on the sea

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.

And so we came forth, and once again beheld the stars.

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.

A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted. You should live several lives while reading it.

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.

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.

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.

It did not occur to me that there would be many difficulties to impede my ambition. . . .

What I encountered in producing Race to the Moon ... It was a moment that was depthless and inexpressible.

The pain is unrelenting one does not abandon, even briefly, one's bed of nails, but is attached to it wherever one goes.

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.

I could compose on white sheets, in longhand, but it would be an added handicap. . . .

If we do not find anything very pleasant, at least we shall find something new.

They are the constants of life, at the core of life, along with nice little delights that come along every now and then. . . . we all have them and they're a hell of a lot more invariable than nuclear fission or the revocation of the Edict of Nantes.

Reading - the best state yet to keep absolute loneliness at bay.