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

This was not judgment day - only morning. Morning: excellent and fair.

You live several lives while reading.

Most people in the grip of depression at its ghastliest are, for whatever reason, in a state of unrealistic hopelessness, torn by exaggerated ills and fatal threats that bear no resemblance to actuality. It may require on the part of friends, lovers, family, admirers, an almost religious devotion to persuade the sufferers of life’s worth, which is so often in conflict with a sense of their own worthlessness, but such devotion has prevented countless suicides.