This memory of my relative indifference is important because such indifference demonstrates powerfully the outsider’s inability to grasp the essence … - William Styron

Depression is a disorder of mood, so mysteriously painful and elusive in the way it becomes known to the self — to the mediating intellect — as to verge close to being beyond description.

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

I thought there's something to be said for honor in this world where there doesn't seem to be any honor left. I thought that maybe happiness wasn't really anything more than the knowledge of a life well spent, in spite of whatever immediate discomfort you had to undergo, and that if a life well spent meant compromises and conciliations and reconciliations, and suffering at the hands of the person you love, well then better that than live without honor.