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William Styron Quotes - Page 3

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Many of the artifacts of my house had become potential devices for my own destruction: the attic rafters (and an outside maple or two) a means to hang myself, the garage a place to inhale carbon monoxide, the bathtub a

Many of the artifacts of my house had become potential devices for my own destruction: the attic rafters (and an outside maple or two) a means to hang myself, the garage a place to inhale carbon monoxide, the bathtub a vessel to receive the flow from my opened arteries. The kitchen knives in their drawers had but one purpose for me.

William Styron
Mean, Knives, Two
William Styron (2010). “Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness”, p.27, Open Road Media

Style comes only have long, hard practice and writing.

William Styron
Writing, Practice, Long

Depression...so mysteriously painful and elusive.

William Styron
Painful, Elusive

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

William Styron
Satire
William Styron (2015). “My Generation: Collected Nonfiction”, p.609, Random House

My life and work have been far from free of blemish, and so I think it would be unpardonable for a biographer not to dish up the dirt.

William Styron
Thinking, Would Be, Dirt
"A Conversation with William Styron". Interview with Sheldon Hackney, www.neh.gov. May/June 1997.

I discovered that I had, in the past two decades, written a far greater amount in the essay form than I remembered. Certainly I have written enough of it to demonstrate that I harbor no disdain for literary journalism or just plain journalism, under whose sponsorship I have been able to express much that has fascinated me, or alarmed me, or amused me, or otherwise engaged my attention when I was not writing a book.

William Styron
Book, Writing, Past
William Styron (1993). “This Quiet Dust and Other Writings”, Vintage

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
Writing, People, Scared
"Conversations with William Styron".

Perhaps the critics are right: this generation may not produce literature equal to that of any past generation-who cares? The writer will be dead before anyone can judge him-but he must go on writing, reflecting disorder, defeat, despair, should that be all he sees at the moment, but ever searching for the elusive love, joy, and hope-qualities which, as in the act of life itself, are best when they have to be struggled for, and are not commonly come by with much ease, either by a critic's formula or by a critic's yearning.

William Styron
Writing, Past, Judging
William Styron (2015). “My Generation: Collected Nonfiction”, p.417, Random House

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

William Styron
Friends, Thinking, Critics
William Styron, James L. W. West (1985). “Conversations with William Styron”, p.15, Univ. Press of Mississippi

I felt a kind of numbness, an enervation, but more particularly an odd fragility - as if my body had actually become frail, hypersensitive and somehow disjointed and clumsy, lacking normal coordination. And soon I was in the throes of a pervasive hypochondria.

William Styron
Numbness, Body, Normal
William Styron (1990). “Darkness visible: a memoir of madness”, Random House Incorporated

Nonfiction writers are second-class citizens, the Ellis Island of literature. We just can't quite get in. And yes, it pisses me off.

William Styron
Islands, Class, Citizens

I think that the best of my generation...have reversed the customary rules of the game and have grown more radical as they have gotten older - a disconcerting but healthy sign. To be sure, there are many youngish old fogies around and even the most illustrious of these, William Buckley, is blessed by a puzzling, recondite but undeniable charm, almost as if beneath that patrician exterior an egalitarian was signaling to get out.

William Styron
Blessed, Thinking, Games

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