Quote

The madness of depression is, generally speaking, 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.

William Styron

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

William Styron
Age: 81 †
Born: 1925
Born: June 11
Died: 2006
Died: November 1
Military Personnel
Novelist
Writer
Newport News
Virginia
William Clark Styron
Jr.
Close
Storm
Responses
Violence
Madness
Psychic
Energy
Ultimately
Psychics
Body
Speaking
Evident
Sapped
Back
Generally
Zero
Slowed
Feels
Indeed
Affected
Antithesis
Response
Depression
Drained
Soon
Near
Paralysis

More quotes by William Styron

Image
Which is worse, past or future? Neither. I will fold up my mind like a leaf and drift on this stream over the brink.
William Styron
Image
I think that one of the compelling themes of fiction is this confrontation between good and evil.
William Styron
Image
Depression...so mysteriously painful and elusive.
William Styron
Image
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.
William Styron
Image
I felt the exultancy of a man just released from slavery and ready to set the universe on fire.
William Styron
Image
Writing is a form of self-flagellation.
William Styron
Image
Writers ever since writing began have had problems, and the main problem narrows down to just one word - life.
William Styron
Image
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.
William Styron
Image
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.
William Styron
Image
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.
William Styron
Image
The good writing of any age has always been the product of someone's neurosis, and we'd have a mighty dull literature if all the writers that came along were a bunch of happy chuckleheads.
William Styron
Image
We would have to settle for the elegant goal of becoming ourselves.
William Styron
Image
Every writer since the beginning of time, just like other people, has been afflicted by what a friend of mine calls
William Styron
Image
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
Image
Reading - the best state yet to keep absolute loneliness at bay.
William Styron
Image
I felt myself no longer a husk but a body with some of the body's sweet juices stirring again. I had my first dream in many months, confused but to this day imperishable, with a flute in it somewhere, and a wild goose, and a dancing girl.
William Styron
Image
Let's face it, writing is hell.
William Styron
Image
Wickedly funny to read and morally bracing as only good satire can be.
William Styron
Image
Through the healing process of time-and through medical intervention or hospitalization in many cases-most people survive depression which may be its only blessing but to the tragic legion who are compelled to destroy themselves there should be no more reproof attached than to the victims of terminal cancer.
William Styron
Image
A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading.
William Styron