William Styron

“Perhaps, he thought, if I only think of this second, this moment, the train won't come at all. Think of the water,…

— William Styron

“Until that moment, although I’d had some trouble with his personality, I had not thought him totally lacking in perspicacity; now I…

— William Styron

Every writer since the beginning of time, just like other people, has been afflicted by what [a] friend of mine calls "the…

— William Styron

“Are there, as science fiction and Gnostic speculation imply, different species of time in the same world, 'good time' and enveloping folds…

— William Styron

I felt the exultancy of a man just released from slavery and ready to set the universe on fire.

— William Styron

“date of the award approached, I would not have accepted at all. Depression is a disorder of mood, so mysteriously painful and…

— William Styron

“I actually shivered at the insincerity that gripped me as I spoke these words: their falseness was shameful. I was sure my…

— William Styron

Writing is a form of self-flagellation.

— William Styron

It's fine therapy for people who are perpetually scared of nameless threats as I am most of the time — for jittery people.

— William Styron

“He was made uneasy by unbraked hilarity and by extremes of sorrow alike, especially the latter; he preferred life to sail along…

— William Styron

“One of the century’s most famous intellectual pronouncements comes at the beginning of The Myth of Sisyphus: “There is but one truly…

— William Styron

“The good writing of any age has always been the product of someone's neurosis, and we'd have mighty dull literature if all…

— William Styron

“E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle.”

— William Styron

“Writing for me is the hardest thing in the world, but also a thing which, once completed, is the most satisfying. ...…

— William Styron

A disruption of the circadian cycle—the metabolic and glandular rhythms that are central to our workaday life—seems to be involved in many,…

— William Styron

From the writer's point of view, critics should be ignored, although it's hard not to do what they suggest. I think it's…

— William Styron

“The pain of severe depression is quite unimaginable to those who have not suffered it, and it kills in many instances because…

— William Styron

I felt a kind of numbness, an enervation, but more particularly an odd fragility - as if my body had actually become…

— William Styron

I think that the best of my generation...have reversed the customary rules of the game and have grown more radical as they…

— William Styron

Wickedly funny to read and morally bracing as only good satire can be.

— William Styron

You live several lives while reading [a good book].

— William Styron

“At Dachau. We had a wonderful pool for the garrison children. It was even heated. But that was before we were transferred.…

— William Styron

“Through some happy accident of heredity he had escaped his father's tediousness, while retaining a little of his mother's jolly high spirits…

— William Styron

In the absence of hope we must still struggle to survive, and so we do-by the skin of our teeth.

— William Styron

What I really mean is that a great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You…

— William Styron