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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.

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.
Streams
Worse
Brink
Neither
Fold
Suffering
Drift
Future
Folds
Past
Leafs
Mind
Leaf
Like
Stream

More quotes by William Styron

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I felt the exultancy of a man just released from slavery and ready to set the universe on fire.
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Writing is a form of self-flagellation.
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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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I think that one of the compelling themes of fiction is this confrontation between good and evil.
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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
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It is hopelessness even more than pain that crushes the soul.
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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.
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Let's face it, writing is hell.
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The writer's duty is to keep on writing.
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Nonfiction writers are second-class citizens, the Ellis Island of literature. We just can't quite get in. And yes, it pisses me off.
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Wickedly funny to read and morally bracing as only good satire can be.
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I think it's unfortunate to have critics for friends.
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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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Let your love flow out on all living things.
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my brain had begun to endure its familiar siege: panic and dislocation, and a sense that my thought processes were being engulfed by a toxic and unnameable tide that obliterated any enjoyable response to the living world.
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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.
William Styron
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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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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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Writers ever since writing began have had problems, and the main problem narrows down to just one word - life.
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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.
William Styron