Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Strive
Mediocrity
Normality
Deny
Brains
Eccentricity
Claims
Affect
Fashionable
Whose
Indifference
Apparent
Talent
Desperate
Attempts
Stultifying
Brain
Claim
Behaviour
Eccentricities
Time
Escape
Originality
Mores
According
Vulgar
Flamboyant

More quotes by Katherine Dunn

Image
I think genetic research is a fascinating and fertile area.
Katherine Dunn
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Suddenly the staggering love bursts away from me like milk from a smashed glass.
Katherine Dunn
Image
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
Image
What I think happens, and that you have to acknowledge though, is that a director uses a book as a launching pad for his own work and that's always very flattering.
Katherine Dunn
Image
I do not plan any painting, but begin with layers of textures and colors. As I layer the colors, something is suggested to me from within, and that is how it evolves.
Katherine Dunn
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
But I think everybody should write. I think those people with stories who don't write should be stomped on.
Katherine Dunn
Image
Every doorway, every intersection has a story.
Katherine Dunn
Image
In the end I would always pull up with a sense of glory, that loving is the strong side. It's feeble to be an object. What's the point of being loved in return, I'd ask myself.
Katherine Dunn
Image
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
Image
This idea that males are physically aggressive and females are not has distinct drawbacks for both sexes.
Katherine Dunn
Image
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
Image
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.
Katherine Dunn