Quotes from William Styron

I have learned to cry again and I think perhaps that means I am a human being again. Perhaps that at least. A piece of human being but yes, a human being.

Ä°yi bir kitap... sonunda seni az?c?k yorgun b?rakmal?. Onu okurken bir sürü hayat ya??yorsun.

I had now reached that phase of the disorder where all sense of hope had vanished, along with the idea of a futurity; my brain, in thrall to its outlaw hormones, had become less an organ of thought than an instrument registering, minute by minute, varying degrees of its own suffering.

Further, Dr. Gold said with a straight face, the pill at optimum dosage could have the side effect of impotence. Until that moment, although I'd had some trouble with his personality, I had not thought him totally lacking in perspicacity; now I was not all sure. Putting myself in Dr. Gold's shoes, I wondered if he seriously thought that this juiceless and ravaged semi-invalid with the shuffle and the ancient wheeze woke up each morning from his Halcion sleep eager for carnal fun.

A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted. You should live several lives while reading it. -- William Styron (born June 11 1925)

I felt loss at every hand. The loss of self-esteem is a celebrated symptom, and my own sense of self had all but disappeared, along with any self-reliance. This loss can quickly degenerate into dependence, and from dependence into infantile dread. One dreads the loss of all things, all people close and dear. There is an acute fear of abandonment.

Which is worse, past or future? Neither. I will fold up my mind like a leaf and drift on this stream over the brink. Which will be soon, and then the dark, and then be done with this ugliness...

Mercifully, I was at that age when reading was still a passion and thus, save for a happy marriage, the best state possible in which to keep absolute loneliness at bay. I could not have made it through those evenings otherwise.

Loss in all of its manifestations is the touchstone of depression—in the progress of the disease and, most likely, in its origin.

Most people in the grip of depression at its ghastliest are, for whatever reason, in a state of unrealistic hopelessness, torn by exaggerated ills and fatal threats that bear no resemblance to actuality. It may require on the part of friends, lovers, family, admirers, an almost religious devotion to persuade the sufferers of life's worth, which is so often in conflict with a sense of their own worthlessness, but such devotion has prevented countless suicides.

Maybe that's the key to happiness—being sort of dumb, not wanting to know any of the answers.

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.

depression, when it finally came to me, was in fact no stranger, not even a visitor totally unannounced; it had been tapping at my door for decades.

Edward was at the stage of drunkenness in which the ego glows like a coal, and brilliant people become more inspired, but in which dull people, fired by the same inspiration, become only more dull.

Writing for me is the hardest thing in the world, but also a thing which, once completed, is the most satisfying. ... I am no prodigy but, Fate willing, I think I can produce art.

Though it is a painful fact that most Negroes are hopelessly docile, many of them are filled with fury, and the unctuous coating of flattery which surrounds and encases that fury is but a form of self-preservation.

It is a positive and active anguish, a sort of psychical neuralgia wholly unknown to normal life.

It is evil to keep these people in bondage, yet they cannot be freed. They must be educated! To free these people without education and with the prejudice that presently exists against them would be a ghastly crime.

I suddenly encountered the face of loneliness, and decided that it was a merciless and ugly face indeed.

It was not really alarming at first, since the change was subtle, but I did notice that my surroundings took on a different tone at certain times: the shadows of nightfall seemed more somber, my mornings were less buoyant, walks in the woods became less zestful, and there was a moment during my working hours in the late afternoon when a kind of panic and anxiety overtook me, just for a few minutes, accompanied by a visceral queasiness.

Then I resolved that I would go back out there and somehow cope with the situation, despite the fact that I lacked a strategy and was frightened to the pit of my being.

I never said I hated the Marine Corps! I only said it was no place for a sensitive, civilized, self-respecting human being.

A cat loped across my gaze with a squint-eyed, piratical look, and a suave grin.

Dress is important. It's part of being human. It might as well be a thing of beauty, something you take real pleasure in doing. And maybe in the process, give other people pleasure. Though that's secondary.