Prior to penicillin and medical research, death was an everyday occurrence. It was intimate. Katherine Dunn More Quotes by Katherine Dunn More Quotes From Katherine Dunn They thought to use and shame me but I win out by nature, because a true freak cannot be made. A true freak must be born. Katherine Dunn freak use winning 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 Katherine Dunn insult comfort lying Every doorway, every intersection has a story. Katherine Dunn intersections doorways stories 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. Katherine Dunn eye animal thinking 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. Katherine Dunn magic trouble age When your mama was the geek, my dreamlets," Papa would say, "she made the nipping off of noggins such a crystal mystery that the hens themselves yearned toward her, waltzing around her, hypnotized with longing. Katherine Dunn papa hens crystals There are the those whose own vulgar normality is so apparent and stultifying that they strive to escape it. They affect flamboyant behaviour and claim originality according to the fashionable eccentricities of their time. They claim brains or talent or indifference to mores in desperate attempts to deny their own mediocrity. Katherine Dunn mediocrity behaviour brain 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. Katherine Dunn choices kind mean 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. Katherine Dunn fashion real dog There are parts of Texas where a fly lives 10,000 years and a man can't die soon enough. Katherine Dunn texas men years I get glimpses of the horror of normalcy. Each of these innocents on the street is engulfed by a terror of their own ordinariness. They would do anything to be unique. Katherine Dunn normalcy glimpse unique 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. Katherine Dunn scary people moving 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. Katherine Dunn baby life believe Defining men as the perpetrators of all violence is a viciously immoral judgment of an entire gender. And defining women as inherently nonviolent condemns us to the equally restrictive role of sweet, meek, and weak. Katherine Dunn feminist sweet men Suddenly the staggering love bursts away from me like milk from a smashed glass. Katherine Dunn staggering milk glasses My perception of the human animal is as an extremely dangerous predator. That's who I perceive us to be as a species. Maybe the most dangerous predator on the planet, with the exception of a few microbes. I'm really grateful for the degree of socialization that prevents us, most of the time, from killing and eating each other. And I admire all the social structures that have been designed and layered and niched in that encourage bonding toward a kind of social harmony that is meant to contain and counteract our natural inclinations toward predation, ferocity, and eating whatever moves. Katherine Dunn grateful animal moving In our struggle to restrain the violence and contain the damage, we tend to forget that the human capacity for aggression is more than a monstrous defect, that it is also a crucial survival tool. Katherine Dunn survival tools struggle And while national military forces have historically resisted the full participation of women soldiers, female talent has found plenty of scope in revolutionary and terrorist groups around the planet. Katherine Dunn terrorist-groups military soldier American culture is torn between our long romance with violence and our terror of the devastation wrought by war and crime and environmental havoc. Katherine Dunn romance war long 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. Katherine Dunn heart people thinking
