William Styron

Born 1925 · Died 2006

From Newport News, Virginia, United States · Nationality: United States · Writes fiction and nonfiction

Quotes

“A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading it.”
Interview in Writers at Work, First Series 1958 , edited by George Plimpton
“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.”
Writers at Work 1958
“I had now reached that phase of the disorder where all sense of hope had vanished, along with the idea of a futurity; my brain, in thrall to its outlaw hormones, had become less an organ of thought than an instrument registering, minute by minute, varying degrees of its own suffering.”
Darkness Visible
“I raise my eyes upward. There alone amidst the blue, steadfast, unmoving, fiery marvel of brightness, shines the morning star. Never has that star seemed so radiant, and I stand gazing at it and do not move though the chill of the damp floor imprisons my feet in piercing icebound pain.”
The Confessions of Nat Turner, Part IV
“The most profound statement yet made about Auschwitz was not a statement at all, but a response. / The query: “At Auschwitz, tell me, where was God?” / And the answer: “Where was man?””
Sophie's Choice, Chapter 16

Books by William Styron in order

Books by William Styron in the order they were published, from Lie Down in Darkness (1951) to Depression (2017).