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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

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Katherine Dunn
Age: 70 †
Born: 1945
Born: October 24
Died: 2016
Died: May 11
Journalist
Novelist
Poet
Radio Personality
Sportswriter
Writer
Garden City
Kansas
Katherine Karen Dunn
According
Vulgar
Flamboyant
Strive
Mediocrity
Normality
Deny
Brains
Eccentricity
Claims
Affect
Fashionable
Whose
Indifference
Apparent
Talent
Desperate
Attempts
Stultifying
Brain
Claim
Behaviour
Eccentricities
Time
Escape
Originality
Mores

More quotes by Katherine Dunn

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Let's just say, the American school of suburban angst is not my cup of tea.
Katherine Dunn
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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
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Oh, of course, I always feel unconfident.
Katherine Dunn
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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.
Katherine Dunn
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Freedom within any kind of social structure - the whole issue of exactly what the human animal is - is an ongoing preoccupation of mine. And I certainly don't think I've come to the end of that exploration, and with any luck, I never will. But I'm very curious about exactly what kind of beast we are. We're so complicated.
Katherine Dunn
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Suddenly the staggering love bursts away from me like milk from a smashed glass.
Katherine Dunn
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My paintings are reflections of my own inner mysteries... they all reflect my relationship to my steadiest of companions and muses - nature and animals.
Katherine Dunn
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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
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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.
Katherine Dunn
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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
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My worst is all out in the open. It makes it necessary for people to tell you about themselves.
Katherine Dunn
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Giving Papa time to think, as Arty put it, was like pumping random rounds into a fireworks factory. The odds favored dramatic results.
Katherine Dunn
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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.
Katherine Dunn
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But I think everybody should write. I think those people with stories who don't write should be stomped on.
Katherine Dunn
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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
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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
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We survive until, by sheer stamina, we escape into the dim innocence of our own adulthood and its forgetfulness.
Katherine Dunn
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Every doorway, every intersection has a story.
Katherine Dunn
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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
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[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.
Katherine Dunn