“How best to portray the story of Lydia---a woman who has mixed Japanese, Malaysian, and English heritage, and who is a vampire, a creature inherently half-demon, half-human---who is constantly trying to resist the temptation of her nature? I designed many versions of this cover; some depicted Lydia, while others focused on specific details from the story, like bite marks, or a pig whose blood she drinks in order to stave off her cravings for human blood. In the end, though, the most powerful visual was not one of Lydia herself, but of the novel's antagonist.
Because Lydia is an artist, it felt fitting to use a painting on the cover, but it needed to be a piece that spoke to the story on multiple levels. Caravaggio's Boy with a Basket of Fruit felt just right; the sidelong glance peering back at the viewer, the lush basket filled with food that Lydia can never eat, not to mention Caravaggio's own less-than-pristine reputation, not dissimilar to our antagonist's. The final touch: a perfectly-placed crack in the canvas---or is it a bite mark?”
Source: Woman, Eating
“You have a good heart, Zoey."
Zoey smiled. "Thanks."
"A weird fascination with this family, but a good heart.”
Source: Other Birds: A Novel
“After the fog lifts and you awaken to the truth about abuse, the narcissist and flying monkeys will minimize the facts about what took place. They will discredit you. They will undermine your own perception. They will accuse you of being insane. Even if you took the time to explain yourself, they will cast all blame onto you.”
Source: Soul Rescue: How to Break Free From Narcissistic Abuse & Heal Trauma
“To become a better you, secure your dreams from the jaws of people who discredit your ambitions.”
Source: Become a Better You
“While a psychiatric diagnosis can serve a purpose in treatment plans, it should not become a tool to discredit a person's disclosure of abuse.”
Source: Violence and Abuse Issues: Cross-Cultural Perspectives for Health and Social Services
“All people express a fondness for truth and sincerity, yet many people prefer to live with their illusions and delusions. A person’s sincere desire to believe only what is true oftentimes does not trump their ingrained resistance to truths that fail to coincide with their deeply held desires. People reject truth because it undercuts what they wish was true and despise or discredit anyone whom offers a different version of truth than they are prepared to accept.”
Source: Dead Toad Scrolls
“The history of hysteria is a history of the relation between the colonizing father and the colonized devalued other.”
Source: Sexual Abuse Recalled: Treating Trauma in the Era of the Recovered Memory Debate
“Disclosures of childhood sexual abuse have frequently been discredited through the diagnosis of hysteria. In this view, women/female children were seen either as culpable seducers who were not really damaged by the sex abuse or as dramatic fantasizers projecting their own incestuous wishes onto the father. I will argue that this view pervades the false-memory movement and can be found, for example, in Gardner's work (1992).”
Source: Sexual Abuse Recalled: Treating Trauma in the Era of the Recovered Memory Debate
“It is a three-year-old child with a heart worn by three million years of living.”
Source: SONG FOR YOU / CÂNTEC PENTRU TINE (Bilingual English–Romanian Edition / Ediție bilingvă engleză–română / 2025): Poems of Love, Madness & Resurrection / ... nebunie și renaștere
“It is lamentable to discredit a practice that prohibits and inhibits abomination; only to inherit a misfit culture.”
Source: Weighty 'n' Worthy African Proverbs - Volume 1