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0db9fd8 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 lying truth Katherine Dunn
2e6fd0b 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. happiness society judgement movies eyes Katherine Dunn
c71696e 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
dc8792a 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
8d6c4d9 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. individuality maniacal Katherine Dunn
14972ea 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." family freaks chicken first-sentence Katherine Dunn
547f6bf 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. Can we blame the child for resenting the fantasy of largeness? Big, soft arms and deep voices in the dark saying, "Tell Papa, tell Mama, and we'll make it right." The child, screaming for r.. Katherine Dunn
b1c2202 A true freak cannot be made. A true freak must be born. Katherine Dunn
b16052a 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. Katherine Dunn
4c78bdf There are those whose own vulgar normality is so apparent and stultifying that they strive to escape it. They affect flamboyant behavior 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. These are frequently artists and performers, adventurers and wide-life devotees. Then there are those who feel their own .. Katherine Dunn
28aa8ee 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. Katherine Dunn
c72c1c6 I wonder, for example, if the twins' piano training had given them the Tomaini brand of dexterity with hand jobs? Could a non-musician learn it? Could I? Children stumble through these most critical acts with no real help from the elders who are so anxious to teach them everything else. We were given rules and taboos for the toilet, the sneeze, the eating of an artichoke. Papa taught us all a particular brush stroke for cleaning our teeth, .. Katherine Dunn
4f49e7c 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
fd74525 Just being visible is my biggest confession, so they try to set me at ease by revealing our equality, by dragging out their own less-apparent deformities. Katherine Dunn
e933dd3 Then he dreamed that he was in the open door of a plane several thousand feet above the earth and he had to jump holding a baby in his arms. It was his baby. He jumped, pulled the rip cord on the parachute, and it didn't open. The emergency release didn't work. He was falling fast. The wind tore at him fiercely. He was gripping the baby as tightly as he could but the wind pried under his arms, strained at his muscles, and suddenly the baby .. death dreams Katherine Dunn
3d009bb It's interesting that when these individuals choose-and it is their choice always-to endure voluntary amputations for their own personal benefit, society professes itself shocked and disapproving. Yet this same society respects the concept that any individual should risk total annihilation in war, subject to the judgement of any superior officer at all and for purposes ranging from a promotion for the lieutenant to higher profits for the bu.. Katherine Dunn
9eea646 Only a lunatic would want to be president. These lunatics are created deliberately by those who wish to be presided over. You've seen it a thousand times. We create a leader by locating one in the crowd who is standing up. This may well be because there are no chairs or because his knees are fused by arthritis. It doesn't matter. We designate this victim as a 'stand-up guy' by the simple expedient of sitting down around him." ARTURISM:" Katherine Dunn
9fdf216 The classic definition of slapstick runs along the line of, "Funny is someone else ramming his face repeatedly into a brick wall." -- Katherine Dunn
f7815fd You must have wished a million times to be normal." "No." "No?" "I've wished I had two heads. Or that I was invisible. I've wished for a fish's tail instead of legs. I've wished to be more special." "Not normal?" "Never." Katherine Dunn
6e85971 Like colors or a spring tree against that kind ofblue sky that pulls your heart out through your eyes. Pretty things will swarm you like that, like your heart was a hive of electric bees. pretty pretty-things Katherine Dunn
ced577d Sometimes when I felt the eyes crawling on me from all sides, I got scared thinking someone was looking who wasn't just curious. I knew it was my imagination and I got used to it, learned to shunt it away. But sometimes I held onto it quietly, that feeling that someone behind or beside me in the crowd - some guy leaning on the target booth with a rifle, or some cranky sweating father spending too much on ride tickets to keep his kids away f.. Katherine Dunn
3e3b44f Pride and power] are the same except that pride leaves the lights on and power can do it in the dark. pride Katherine Dunn
d60366d All he had to do to make me like him was need me. All he had to do to make Arty like him was drop dead. Katherine Dunn
4d6c8eb Then there are those who feel their own strangeness and are terrified by it. They struggle toward normalcy. They suffer to exactly that degree that they are unable to appear normal to others, or to convince themselves that their aberration does not exist. These are true freaks, who appear, almost always, conventional and dull. Katherine Dunn
17b9330 the top head would have controlled everything and made his poor little butt-brother miserable. Katherine Dunn
b9dfb81 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
369364f There are those whose own vulgar normality is so apparent and stultifying that they strive to escape it. They affect flamboyant behavior 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. These are frequently artists and performers, adventurers and wide-life devotees. Then there are those who feel their own.. Katherine Dunn
e8bd1a4 What's bred in the bones, when you have bones, comes through. And they looked at her, watched her, wanted to squirt her full of baby juice. Katherine Dunn
f6302bb Dear daughter, I won't try to call my feeling for Arty love. Call it focus. My focus on Art was an ailment, noncommunicable, and, even to me all these years later, incomprehensible. Now I despise myself. But even so 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 earthq.. Katherine Dunn
79ce0a8 Mama, Elli bol'she net. Ifi izmenilas'. Vse izmenilos'. Eto varen'e iz ezheviki, gotovka obedov na vsiu sem'iu, kotoraia davno uzhe ne sobiraetsia za odnim stolom, torty na dni rozhdeniia Arti... Zachem eto, mama? Perestan' pritvoriat'sia. Sem'i bol'she net. Ona udarila menia lozhkoi. Sil'no, s razmakhu - priamo po ukhu. Fioletovo-chernyi sok zabryzgal ves' stol. Mama v uzhase ustavilas' na menia. Ia tozhe ustavilas' na nee, otkryv rot. Pot.. Katherine Dunn
3d62c64 And me all the while having to pee--coughing into the mike when my throat was tired and raw--eyes stinging and lips and chin crumpling in grief at his anger. The sweet tinkle of Electra on the bass and Iphy on the treble with Mama's voice counting, "One and two and ..." as the twins had their piano lesson inside the trailer. The gurgle and hum of the pumps that filtered my brother Arty's "Aqua Boy" tank. And the dim round moon of baby Fortu.. Katherine Dunn
b65dd14 Beside Mama, in my own folding chair, with my feet sticking out in front of me, I thought about my own innards. Just a few months before I'd had no idea whether my reproductive equipment worked. There was no evidence. But that week I had become a full-fledged bleeder and was still absorbed by this first change in myself that I had ever noticed. The click and buzz of my synapses kept making the same connection. If you can change, you can als.. Katherine Dunn
8cf8316 How proud I am, dancing in the air full of eyes rubbing at me uncovered, unable to look away because of what I am. Those poor hop toads behind me are silent. I've conquered them. 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. (20) Katherine Dunn
931603c We survive until, by sheer stamina, we escape into the dim innocence of our own adulthood and its forgetfulness. Katherine Dunn
67da234 You just want to know that you're all right. You just want to feel all right." And now he dives into the sneer. Arty's sneer could flay a rhino. "That's all you need other people's love for!" Katherine Dunn
e1aac7e I don't mind being lord of all I survey but I don't want to have to work at it. It just wouldn't be practical. Katherine Dunn
5a7bb41 Understand, daughter, that the only reason for your existing was as a tribute to your uncle-father. You were meant to love him. I planned to teach you how to serve him and adore him. You would be his monument and his fortress against mortality. Forgive me. As soon as you arrived I realized that you were worth far more than that. Katherine Dunn
905561e there are those who feel their own strangeness and are terrified by it. They struggle toward normalcy. They suffer to exactly that degree that they are unable to appear normal to others, or to convince themselves that their aberration does not exist. These are true freaks, who appear, almost always, conventional and dull. Katherine Dunn
3c88fce 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. Katherine Dunn
9e644fb A carnival in daylight is an unfinished beast, anyway. Rain makes it a ghost. The wheezing music from the empty, motionless rides in a soggy, rained-out afternoon midway always hit my chest with a sweet ache. The colored dance of the lights in the seeping air flashed the puddles in the sawdust with an oily glamour. Katherine Dunn
100295b Arty's growing flock, however, was different. I dreamed one night that Arty cried them into the world. They came out of his eyes as a green liquid that dripped to the ground making puddles. The puddles thickened and jelled into bodies that got up and hung around Arty. But Dr. P. and the advance man and McGurk, and later Sanderson and the Bag Man and the nebbishes and the simps who mooned and crooned around him, were all there because of Art.. Katherine Dunn
4441429 I suspect people are suckers for a prick. I suspect folks just naturally go belly-up for a snob. Folks figure if a guy acts like he's King Tut and everybody else is donkey shit, he must be an aristocrat. Katherine Dunn
55bdd96 She talks. People talk easily to me. They think a bald albino hunchback can't hide anything. My worst is all out in the open. It makes it necessary for people to tell you about themselves. They begin out of simple courtesy. Just being visible is my biggest confession, so they try to set me at ease by revealing our equality, by dragging out their apparent deformities. That's how it starts. But I am like a stranger on the bus and they get hoo.. Katherine Dunn
a868ce8 There were oil wells everywhere. The soil had been abandoned to dust and lizards, and the backyard of every wind-blistered bungalow in town had thrown over ideas of shade or geraniums in favor of the whiskey promise in the mutter of those green grasshopper pumps...A dozen ravenous steel insects sucked at the shit-caked loam in the mile-square meatfield of empty pens where the beeves, when there were beeves, milled waiting for the knife. (12.. oil Katherine Dunn
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