William Styron

A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted. You should live several lives while reading it." -- William Styron (born June 11 1925)

A disruption of the circadian cycle__he metabolic and glandular rhythms that are central to our workaday life__eems 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__ pattern of distress exhibits fairly predictable alternating periods of intensity and relief.

The pain of severe depression is quite unimaginable to those who have not suffered it, and it kills in many instances because its anguish can no longer be borne. The prevention of many suicides will continue to be hindered until there is a general awareness of the nature of this pain.

In De Rerum Natura, Lucretius pointed out a very central truth concerning the examined life. That is, that the man of science who concerns himself solely with science, who cannot enjoy and be enriched by art, is a misshapen man. An incomplete man.

A good book should leave you....slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading it.

A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading.

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.

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.

The good writing of any age has always been the product of someone's neurosis, and we'd have mighty dull literature if all the writers that came along were a happy bunch of chuckleheads.

We would have to settle for the elegant goal of becoming ourselves.

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.

Then I resolved that I would go back out there and somehow cope with the situation, despite the fact that I lacked a strategy and was frightened to the pit of my being.

E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle.And so we came forth, and once again beheld the stars.