William Styron - Writers Quotes

5 Sourced Quotes

View all William Styron Quotes

Every writer since the beginning of time, just like other people, has been afflicted by what [a] friend of mine called the fleas of life —you know, colds, hangovers, bills, sprained ankles, and little nuisances of one sort or another.

William Styron

The purpose of a young writer is to write, and he shouldn't drink too much. He shouldn't think that after he's written one book he's God Almighty and air all his immature opinions in pompous interviews. Let's have another cognac and go up to Le Chapelain.

William Styron

Writers ever since writing began have had problems, and the main problem narrows down to just one word — life. Certainly this might be an age of so-called faithlessness and despair we live in, but the new writers haven't cornered any market on faithlessness and despair, any more than Dostoyevsky or Marlowe or Sophocles did.

William Styron

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

When, in the autumn of 1947, I was fired from the first and only job I have ever held, I wanted one thing out of life: to become a writer.

William Styron