Verisimilitude Quotes

“[Author's Note:] When I was sixteen, two of my cousins were brutally raped by four strangers and thrown off a bridge in St. Louis, Missouri. My brother was beaten and also forced off the bridge. I wrote about that horrible crime in my first book, my memoir, A Rip in Heaven. Because that crime and the subsequent writing of the book were both formative experience in my life, I became a person who is always, automatically, more interested in stories about victims than perpetrators. I'm interested in characters who suffer inconceivable hardship, in people who manage to triumph over extraordinary trauma. Characters like Lydia and Soledad. I'm less interested in the violent, macho stories of gangsters and law enforcement. Or in any case, I think the world has enough stories like those. Some fiction set in the world of the cartels and narcotraficantes is compelling and important - I read much of it during my early research. Those novels provide readers with an understanding of the origins of the some of the violence to our south. But the depiction of that violence can feed into some of the worst stereotypes about Mexico. So I saw an opening for a novel that would press a little more intimately into those stories, to imagine people on the flip side of that prevailing narrative. Regular people like me. How would I manage if I lived in a place that began to collapse around me? If my children were in danger, how far would I go to save them? I wanted to write about women, whose stories are often overlooked.”
― Jeanine Cummins, American Dirt

“To express the love of two lovers by the marriage of two complementary colours, their blending and their contrast, the mysterious vibrations of related tones. To express the thought of a brow by the radiance of a light tone against a dark background. To express hope by some star. Someone's passion by the radiance of the setting sun. That's certainly no realistic trompe l'oeil, but something that really exists, isn't it?”
― Vincent van Gogh, The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

“Reality was a drunk buying a lottery ticket, cashing out to the tune of seventy million dollars, and splitting it with his favorite barmaid. A little girl emerging alive from a well in Texas where she'd been trapped for six days. A college boy falling from a fifth-floor in Cancun and only breaking his wrist. Reality was Ralph.”
― Stephen King, Lisey's Story

“What rehearsal? He doesn’t know why this phrase appeared in his head, except that lately he has difficulty believing that this is his life now and not some prank that will be called off soon.”
― Beth Morgan, A Touch of Jen

“Why are you talking to them, they're not important! Brownnose this one! He can HELP you!”
― Lester Bangs, Main Lines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste: A Lester Bangs Reader