Talk:William Styron

Unsourced

Wikiquote no longer allows unsourced quotations, and they are in process of being removed from our pages (see Wikiquote:Limits on quotations); but if you can provide a reliable, precise and verifiable source for any quote on this list please move it to William Styron. --Antiquary 18:58, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

• 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.

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

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

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

• 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.

• 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.
  • This seems to be more often attributed to "J. Swartz", but without any source citations of this person either.

• 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.

• Not long ago I received in the mail a doctoral thesis entitled: Sophie's Choice: A Jungian Perspective, which I sat down to read. It was quite a long document. In the first paragraph it said, "In this thesis my point of reference throughout will be the Alan J. Paluka movie of Sophie's Choice." There was a footnote, which I swear to you said, "Where the movie is obscure I will refer to William Styron's novel for clarification." This idiocy laid a pall over my life for a dark brief time because it brought back all those bugaboos we have about the written word.

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

• 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.

• The writer's duty is to keep on writing.

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