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Katherine Dunn Biography

Katherine Karen Dunn (October 24, 1945 – May 11, 2016) was an American best-selling novelist, journalist, voice artist, radio personality, book reviewer, and poet from Portland, Oregon. She is best known for the novel Geek Love (1989). She was also a prolific writer on boxing.

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Katherine Dunn Quotes

I have been a believer in the magic of language since, at a very early age, I discovered that some words got me into trouble and others got me out.

Age, Early, Language, Magic, Trouble, Words

Sometimes all that saves me is being willing to make mistakes. There are projects that strike me as so beautiful, important, complicated, or just plain big, that they convince me of my own inadequacy. This awful state of reverence leads to paralyzing brain freeze. At times like that the only way out is for me to decide, 'To hell with it. I can't do it right, so I'll do it wrong. I can't do it well, but I can do it badly. ' Sometimes, with luck, while I'm sweating to do it wrong, I stumble on a right way.

Beautiful, Complicated, Luck, Mistake, Way, Wrong

Prior to penicillin and medical research, death was an everyday occurrence. It was intimate.

Death, Everyday, Medical, Occurrence, Research

From the time I was little, I'd been kind of freaked out by the whole deal with large groups of people. And even moderate - sized groups of people. It's always made me very uncomfortable. It's such a strange phenomenon, what happens to people when they're all moving in the same direction, all chanting the same tune, the same line of slogans or something. That stuff always seems very alien and bizarre to me, and kind of scary.

Bizarre, Direction, Moving, People, Same, Scary

How deep and sticky is the darkness of childhood, how rigid the blades of infant evil, which is unadulterated, unrestrained by the convenient cushions of age and its civilizing anesthesia.

Childhood, Cushions, Darkness, Evil, Infant

Perhaps the strongest evidence that women have as broad and deep a capacity for physical aggression as men is anecdotal. And as with men, this capacity has expressed itself in acts from the brave to the brutal, the selfless to the senseless.

Brave, Bravery, Men, Physical, Selfless

The truth is always an insult or a joke, lies are generally tastier. We love them. The nature of lies is to please. Truth has no concern for anyone's comfort

Comfort, Insult, Joke, Lying, Nature, Truth

Can you be happy with the movies, and the ads, and the clothes in the stores, and the doctors, and the eyes as you walk down the street all telling you there is something wrong with you? No. You cannot be happy. Because, you poor darling baby, you believe them.

Baby, Believe, Doctors, Down, Life

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.

Dog, Fashion, Folks, Giants, Real, Streaks

My worst is all out in the open. It makes it necessary for people to tell you about themselves.

Necessary, Open, People, Worst

Sometimes just looking at [my parents] I wanted to bash their heads with a tire iron. Not to kill them, just to wake them up.

Bash, Iron, Kill, Parent, Sometimes

[I] am reading No Ordinary Joes. Should have had a medical checkup before I started it. Colton makes us fall in love with these guys, then puts our hearts in harm's way. It's lovely and ghastly and extremely powerful. His best yet.

Falling In Love, Guys, Ordinary, Powerful, Reading

But the animation has become very good, and I think that a movie is not a book, and a book is not a movie.

Animation, Book, Good, Movie, Thinking

But I think everybody should write. I think those people with stories who don't write should be stomped on.

Everybody, People, Stomped, Thinking, Write, Writing

I remember, in hot floods, the way he slept, still as death, with his face washed flat, stony as a carved tomb and exquisite. His weakness and his ravening bitter needs were terrible, and beautiful, and irresistible as an earthquake. He scalded or smothered anyone he needed, but his needing and the hurt that it caused me were the most life I have ever had. Remember what a poor thing I have always been and forgive me.

Beautiful, Earthquakes, Hurt, Scalded, Smothered, Way

I think genetic research is a fascinating and fertile area.

Area, Areas, Fertile, Research, Think, Thinking

There are parts of Texas where a fly lives ten thousand years and a man can't die soon enough. Time gets strange there from too much sky, too many miles from crack to crease in the flat surface of the land.

Land, Men, Miles, Texas, Time, Years

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.

Heart, Life, People, Plan, Think, Thinking

Were also far enough from the publishing power that we have no access to the politics of publishing, although there are interpersonal politics, of course.

Enough, Interpersonal, Politics, Power, Publishing

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.

Air, Cat, Creatures, Patch, Puddle, Rivers

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