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It is hopelessness even more than pain that crushes the soul.

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.
Soul
Even
Crushes
Deliverance
Hopelessness
Crush
Depression
Visible
Pain

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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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The writer's duty is to keep on writing.
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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.
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In Vineyard Haven, on Martha's Vineyard, mostly I love the soft collision here of harbor and shore, the subtly haunting briny quality that all small towns have when they are situated on the sea
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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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I think it's unfortunate to have critics for friends.
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The pain of severe depression is quite unimaginable to those who have not suffered it.
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Depression...so mysteriously painful and elusive.
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we each devise our means of escape from the intolerable.
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In Paris on a chilling evening late in October of 1985 I first became fully aware that the struggle with the disorder in my mind - a struggle which had engaged me for several months - might have a fatal outcome.
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Reading - the best state yet to keep absolute loneliness at bay.
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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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Writing is a form of self-flagellation.
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The pain is unrelenting one does not abandon, even briefly, one's bed of nails, but is attached to it wherever one goes.
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What I really mean is that a great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading it.
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It's fine therapy for people who are perpetually scared of nameless threats as I am most of the time — for jittery people.
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The mornings themselves were becoming bad now as I wandered about lethargic, following my synthetic sleep, but afternoons were still the worst, beginning at about three o'clock, when I'd feel the horror, like some poisonous fog bank roll in upon my mind, forcing me into bed.
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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.
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Style comes only have long, hard practice and writing.
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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.
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