The reader should bear in mind that Kit Brandon was and is a real person, a living American woman. How much of her real story can be told? You, sitting and reading this book, have also a story, a history. How much of that could be told? How much do we writers dare let ourselves go in the making of portraits? How close can we keep to truth? How much do we dare try to be true historians?
Sherwood Anderson, Kit Brandon
Neither of us—Hemingway or I—could have touched, ridiculed, his work itself. But we had made his style look ridiculous; and by that time, after Dark Laughter, when he had reached the point where he should have stopped writing, he had to defend that style at all costs because he too must have known by then in his heart that there was nothing else left.
William Faulkner, “Sherwood Anderson:
An Appreciation”
Courtroom exchange during grand-jury investigation between Forrest Bondurant and defense attorney Timberlake:
Defense attorney Timberlake: You and your brother Jack Bondurant were both armed, weren’t you?
Bondurant: Yes, sir.
Timberlake: And you covered the officers with your pistols while Everett Dillon made off with one of the liquor cars, didn’t you?
Bondurant: No, sir. We never touched our pistols.
Timberlake: You told [deputies] Rakes and Abshire that “somebody is going to die” unless they let you go across the bridge, didn’t you?
T. Keister Greer, The Great Moonshine Conspiracy
Trial of 1935
There is a great black bell without a tongue, swinging silently in the darkness. It swings and swings, making a great arch and I await silent and frightened. Now it stops and descends slowly. I am terrified. Can nothing stop the great descending iron bell?
Sherwood Anderson, A Story Teller’s Story