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Depression...so mysteriously painful and elusive.

William Styron

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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.
Mysteriously
Elusive
Depression
Painful

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I think it's unfortunate to have critics for friends.
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When, in the autumn of 1947, I was fired from the first and only job I have ever held, I wanted one thing out of life: to become a writer.
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The stigma of self-inflicted death is for some people a hateful blot that demands erasure at all costs.
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we each devise our means of escape from the intolerable.
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Wickedly funny to read and morally bracing as only good satire can be.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Let your love flow out on all living things.
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Which is worse, past or future? Neither. I will fold up my mind like a leaf and drift on this stream over the brink.
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A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading.
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The pain of severe depression is quite unimaginable to those who have not suffered it.
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Depression is a disorder of mood, so mysteriously painful and elusive in the way it becomes known to the self -- to the mediating intellect-- as to verge close to being beyond description. It thus remains nearly incomprehensible to those who have not experienced it in its extreme mode.
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We would have to settle for the elegant goal of becoming ourselves.
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Writing is a form of self-flagellation.
William Styron
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A disruption of the circadian cycle—the metabolic and glandular rhythms that are central to our workaday life—seems to be involved in many, if not most, cases of depression this is why brutal insomnia so often occurs and is most likely why each day’s pattern of distress exhibits fairly predictable alternating periods of intensity and relief.
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I'm simply the happiest, the placidest, when I'm writing, and so I suppose that that, for me, is the final answer. ... It's fine therapy for people who are perpetually scared of nameless threats as I am most of the time.
William Styron
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A great book should leave you with many experiences.
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This was not judgment day - only morning. Morning: excellent and fair.
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