William Styron didn't realize his characters reflected his own troubles until it nearly cost him his life.
"I realized in hindsight that virtually everything I had written, even what I had written in my early 20s, was haunted by some mood disorder, by mental turmoil," said Styron, author of the novel "Sophie's Choice."Styron, 70, said he nearly killed himself in the mid-1980s during a bout with depression and heavy drinking. He checked into a hospital instead.
The experience made him realize why he had some of his characters kill themselves.