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Camus's great essay "Reflections on the Guillotine" was alone almost enough - in its persuasive logic and eloquence - to make me an enemy of capital punishment.

— William Styron This Quiet Dust and Other Writings (1982)

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More quotes by William Styron

It could be all unwittingly that I wrote in Darkness Visible what amounted to a Rosetta stone for my other work.

Someday I will understand Auschwitz. This was a brave statement but innocently absurd. No one will ever understand Auschwitz.

Sophie's Choice (1979)

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)

Surely mankind has yet to be born. Surely this is true!

The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967)

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

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