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The Shabaka [Sundiata Waglini] story illuminates the most sordid defects of capital punishment. His blackness and poverty helped doom him. He was ruthlessly cheated; it was never his privilege to be granted - even for a phantom crime - the incarceration [i.e. instead of death row] that it meted out to others and that carries the possibility of redemption.

— 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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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: William Styron (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.