William Styron Quotes

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

• Literature
• Class
• Citizens
• Island
• Ellis

• Previous
• Next

Quotes to Explore

• I am very much a girly girl as well as being this tough, athletic fighter. I grew up a tomboy. I got my first four wheeler when I was eight. I got my first dirt bike shortly after. So, I have a lot of these manly qualities, I guess you would say. But, I also like to go get dressed up every weekend.

  

  Paige VanZant
  • Girl
  • Bike
  • Fighter

• I'm the lightest sleeper. I can hear a pin drop. It's been worse since I was ill. I think your inner ear is always half open, listening out for the faintest danger sign.

  

  Sam Taylor-Wood
  • Think
  • Always
  • Listening

• I don't even have my own computer.

  

  Daley Thompson
  • Computer
  • Own
  • My Own

• And the beautiful open spaces, the forests of Pennsylvania, the recreational uses that come from having these green open spaces and forests, they contribute dramatically to the level of our tourism, dramatically.

  

  Ed Rendell
  • Beautiful
  • Green
  • Tourism

• I'm constantly intimidated by Shakespeare's work. Trying to decipher what he's saying and holding on to that thought - not just as an actor, but as a human being - is a rigour.

  

  Zoe Wanamaker
  • Work
  • Trying
  • Thought

• I always wanted to be an actress. And it wasn't ego. I felt so little about myself, considered myself such a sparrow. Not just my size. I thought I was so plain... I did plays not to show off but because if I did that - I didn't realize it at the time - I would be somebody other than this person I didn't really approve of.

  

  Frances Bay
  • Time
  • Myself
  • Thought

• I spent a lot of time with a crown on my head.

  

  Halle Berry
  • Time
  • Head
  • Crown

• I tried to take seriously the idea that if you tortured language you might arrive at some new truth. Later it became clear to me that I was retreading ground by fighting the literary battles of the 1950s and 1960s, and that I was actually a bit bored by some of the books I professed to love.

  

  Hari Kunzru
  • Love
  • Truth
  • Fighting

• I stuff animals I find; I do roadkill. They're strangely fun to have. They're like easy-to-control pets.

  

  Padgett Powell
  • Fun
  • Control
  • Find

• I will eat disgusting things, but only those with long established culinary traditions.

  

  Dana Goodyear
  • Long
  • Traditions
  • Culinary

• The relationship between violence and nonviolence in this country is interesting. The fact of the matter is, you know, people do respond to riots. The 1968 Housing Act was in large response to riots that broke out after Dr. Martin Luther King was killed. They cited these as an actual inspiration.

  

  Ta-Nehisi Coates
  • Violence
  • Inspiration
  • Respond

• Mountain climbing is my passion, and to empower women through my expeditions is the reason. I am doing the mountain climbing to empower women.

  

  Samina Baig
  • Women
  • Passion
  • Mountain

• The expectation was that 'True Confessions' would be my first published book, but that didn't happen. After it was rejected by every publisher in New York and Canada, I shoved it in a closet and went on to write and publish my next three books.

  

  Rachel Gibson
  • Book
  • True
  • New York

• When mom and dad were at the height of their careers, and things were super-crazy, and they couldn't leave their houses, there wasn't social media. It was all about autographs. Now, everyone's the press. I feel fame is perforated: it can be glorious, but it can completely destroy a human, too.

  

  Dakota Johnson
  • Dad
  • Mom
  • Crazy

• I love soccer. My father is from Argentina and my mother is from El Salvador. I grew up watching Argentinean soccer. I get really worked up watching soccer. It's in my blood.

  

  J. D. Pardo
  • Mother
  • Father
  • Soccer

• The distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers, and New Englanders are no more. I am not a Virginian but an American.

  

  Patrick Henry
  • American
  • Distinctions
  • New Yorkers

• I go out with my band six months of the year and the rest of them with the Blues Brothers.

  

  Eddie Floyd
  • Band
  • Rest
  • Year

• A true yogi may remain dutifully in the world; there, he is like butter on water and not like the easily-diluted milk of unchurned and undisciplined humanity.

  

  Paramahansa Yogananda
  • World
  • May
  • True

• Radio is so cutthroat, but I do feel like the music industry is structured so differently than it used to be. I'm amazed and in awe of artists who can build a parallel universe that's so big and clearly defined that the mainstream finally has to pay attention.

  

  Caroline Polachek Chairlift
  • Attention
  • Artists
  • Radio

• I remember I did a boxing class. I remember sparring one time, and the guy smacked me right in the nose, and I was just like, 'What is this? No. No. None of that.

  

  Becky Lynch
  • Time
  • Remember
  • Guy

• Oh, I'm terribly ignorant of Czech literature. It's disgraceful really.

  

  John Banville
  • Literature

• I often like to think that our map of the world is wrong, that where we have centered physics, we should actually place literature as the central metaphor that we want to work out from. Because I think literature occupies the same relationship to life that life occupies to death. A book is life with one dimension pulled out of it. And life is something that lacks a dimension which death will give it. I imagine death to be a kind of release into the imagination in the sense that for characters in a book, what we experience is an unimaginable dimension of freedom.

  

  Terence McKenna
  • World
  • Character
  • Book

• I wish I could be like Shaw who once read a bad review of one of his plays, called the critic and said: 'I have your review in front of me and soon it will be behind me.'

  

  Barbra Streisand
  • Bad
  • Plays
  • Behind

• 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
  • Literature
  • Class
  • Citizens