Katherine Dunn Quotes

It is, I suppose, the common grief of children at having to protect their parents from reality. It is bitter for the young to see what awful innocence adults grow into, that terrible vulnerability that must be sheltered from the rodent mire of childhood.

Basically, we are pack animals. We may be evolving toward hive animals. The nature of the pack is that if all the eyes of the pack are on you, you are either the leader, or you are lunch. So it's a basically hazardous situation to have the eyes of the pack upon you. And I think that's really visceral. I think that's bred in the bone. That's species - deep.

He must love me, i thought, amazed. A faint whiff of nausea hit me at seeing pain as proof of love, but it seemed true. Unavoidable.

This idea that males are physically aggressive and females are not has distinct drawbacks for both sexes.

I think that it's really important to go away and come back.

Within a social structure, a familial structure, or a cultural structure of various kinds, there is a substitute for actual freedom. I mean, actual freedom is a very abstract notion; we have no idea what it means, except within a context - freedom to do what? So within these social structures, freedom becomes defined as power, your ability to make choices, and the power relationship within a family, any family.

It is coincidence, I decide, and I am getting old and batty, thinking the universe revolves around me.

In my next life, I plan to be a more respectable creature. For now, this is what is given to us. So I don't know - I think we're all freaks at heart. I think some people strive desperately to be normal, and I think other people strive to be abnormal.

I do consider the human capacity for violence is the central issue of the social contract. In boxing we have a peculiarly civilized form, in that boxers don't screech and holler. They don't use weapons. All of this seems to me quite amazing, because it is so disciplined, so controlled. It's ritualized, but absolutely genuine. And the cultural structure built around that ritual is absolutely fascinating to me. And it seems to me that boxing is one of those structures that is designed to promote harmony. I think that it is a stove that contains that fire in us and makes it safe and useful.

It goes in streaks. But some things never go out of fashion.' Hunger artists, fat folks, giants, and dog acts come and go but real freaks never lose their appeal.

Just as a snowflakewent on to feed a puddle that filled a stream and then the river, thepumpkin patch is a gathering of molecules from my old goats, chickens,and cats, feeding the underworld of dirt creatures. And somewhere, myfather's ashes mingle with birds, air, and sea.

I am here, come closer," the old donkey said with her eyes. "I will mother you.

Sometimes people go off in a slightly different direction of wanting to be different, of wanting to be special, of wanting to be more, and I think that those people are often - not always, but often - genuinely different in some way. Perhaps their gender orientation is not acceptable or popular, not the norm. Or, their physical design is literally, in some way, setting them apart. Or, in many cases, they feel the burden of their ordinariness so dreadfully that they strive to find some way of being unique. I think that can be a very positive thing, but it also can be negative, destructive.