William Styron Quotes - Page 3

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• Wickedly funny to read and morally bracing as only good satire can be.

  William Styron

  Satire

  William Styron (2015). “My Generation: Collected Nonfiction”, p.609, Random House

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• Every writer since the beginning of time, just like other people, has been afflicted by what a friend of mine calls

  William Styron

  People, Mines, Has Beens

  William Styron, James L. W. West (1985). “Conversations with William Styron”, p.17, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• For a person whose sole burning ambition is to write - like myself - college is useless beyond the Sophomore year.

  William Styron

  Writing, Ambition, College

  William Styron (2012). “Selected Letters of William Styron”, p.23, Random House

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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.

  William Styron

  Writing, People, Scared

  "Conversations with William Styron".

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• And when you get an eminent journal like Time magazine complaining, as it often has, that to the young writers of today life seems short on rewards and that what they write is a product of their own neuroses, in its silly way the magazine is merely stating the status quo and obvious truth. 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

  Silly, Writing, Today Life

  "Conversations with William Styron".

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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.

  William Styron

  Thinking, Would Be, Dirt

  "A Conversation with William Styron". Interview with Sheldon Hackney, www.neh.gov. May/June 1997.

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• I discovered that I had, in the past two decades, written a far greater amount in the essay form than I remembered. Certainly I have written enough of it to demonstrate that I harbor no disdain for literary journalism or just plain journalism, under whose sponsorship I have been able to express much that has fascinated me, or alarmed me, or amused me, or otherwise engaged my attention when I was not writing a book.

  William Styron

  Book, Writing, Past

  William Styron (1993). “This Quiet Dust and Other Writings”, Vintage

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• Perhaps the critics are right: this generation may not produce literature equal to that of any past generation-who cares? The writer will be dead before anyone can judge him-but he must go on writing, reflecting disorder, defeat, despair, should that be all he sees at the moment, but ever searching for the elusive love, joy, and hope-qualities which, as in the act of life itself, are best when they have to be struggled for, and are not commonly come by with much ease, either by a critic's formula or by a critic's yearning.

  William Styron

  Writing, Past, Judging

  William Styron (2015). “My Generation: Collected Nonfiction”, p.417, Random House

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• I think it's unfortunate to have critics for friends.

  William Styron

  Friends, Thinking, Critics

  William Styron, James L. W. West (1985). “Conversations with William Styron”, p.15, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• I felt a kind of numbness, an enervation, but more particularly an odd fragility - as if my body had actually become frail, hypersensitive and somehow disjointed and clumsy, lacking normal coordination. And soon I was in the throes of a pervasive hypochondria.

  William Styron

  Numbness, Body, Normal

  William Styron (1990). “Darkness visible: a memoir of madness”, Random House Incorporated

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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.

  William Styron

  Islands, Class, Citizens

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• I think that the best of my generation...have reversed the customary rules of the game and have grown more radical as they have gotten older - a disconcerting but healthy sign. To be sure, there are many youngish old fogies around and even the most illustrious of these, William Buckley, is blessed by a puzzling, recondite but undeniable charm, almost as if beneath that patrician exterior an egalitarian was signaling to get out.

  William Styron

  Blessed, Thinking, Games

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