Carolina QuotesI think it is absolute and unimpeachable testimony to a book's impact on us that we are able to associate it so keenly with the time and the surroundings and the circumstances in which we read it. Only a very great work can produce this memory; [...] There is what psychologists call a gestalt, an unforgettability of interwoven emotions with which the work will ever in recollection be connected with the environment. Somehow the excitement of reading All the King's Men is always linked in my mind with the howling blizzard outside and the snow piling up in a solid white impacted mass outside my basement window. [...] I finished All the King's Men as in a trance, knowing once and for all that I, too, however falteringly and incompletely, must try to work such magic.
William Styron Connected to the Carolinas
Source
Section, 'Robert Penn Warren' [part of a speech delivered at the Lotus Club, New York, April 1975] - p.269
- form
- speech
- work
- This Quiet Dust and Other Writings (1982)
- year
- 1975
- locator
- p.269
Cite this record
“I think it is absolute and unimpeachable testimony to a book…” William Styron. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-995DD392F8. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/995dd392f8
More from William Styron
Grieving, yet somehow unbending, steadfast, unafraid, the voice rose through the evening like memory, and a gust of wind blew up from the river, dimming the song, rustling the trees, then died and became still. I’ll lay in de grave and stretch out my arms … Suddenly the voice ceased, and all was quiet. Then what I done was wrong, Lord? I said. And if what I done was wrong, is there no redemption? I raised my eyes upward but there was no answer, only the gray impermeable sky and night falling fast over Jerusalem.
Numberless factors shape one's needs and longings.
And as I think of her, the desire swells within me and I am stirred by a longing so great that like those memories of time past and long-ago voices, flowing waters, rushing winds, it seems more than my heart can abide. Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and everyone that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. Her voice is close, familiar, real, and for an instant I mistake the wind against my ear, a gentle gust, for her breath, and I turn to seek her in the darkness. And now beyond my fear, beyond my dread and emptiness, I feel the warmth flow into my loins and my legs tingle with desire. I tremble and I search for her face in my mind, seek her young body, yearning for her suddenly with a rage that racks me with a craving beyond pain; with tender stroking motions I pour out my love within her; pulsing flood; she arches against me, cries out, and the twain—black and white—are one. I faint slowly. My head falls toward the window, my breath comes hard. I recall a meadow, June, the voice a whisper: Is it not true, Nat? Did He not say, I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star?