American - Novelist | October 24, 1945 - May 11, 2016
Sometimes we followed the crops, doing migrant labor. We did several years of tenant farming in Western Oregon starting in the early '50s. Later, my stepdad managed gas stations in a small town near Portland.
Katherine Dunn
SmallDoingEarlySmall TownLabor
There are 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.
TimeTalentMediocrityEscapeStrive
I'm like every waitress in every diner; I'm like every mom driving her kids to school. I'm nothing special at all.
SchoolMomDrivingNothingSpecial
A film adaptation is, I hope, the director's version. A new creation.
HopeNewCreationDirectorFilm
My lip curls in a snide reflex whenever I hear that a new novel is written from the point of view of a child or a monster, a lunatic or an animal. I immediately expect a nasty coyness of tone, cheesy artifice, the world through cardboard 3-D lenses.
AnimalChildWorldViewNewMonster
I think it is the natural and innate function of certain organisms to secrete beauty in permanent forms we call artworks, to respond to beauty by answering its discovery with a new beauty.
BeautyThinkDiscoveryNewPermanent
In boxing, it just seemed to me from the time I was a very small child, we have a peculiarly civilized form in that boxers don't screech and holler. They don't use weapons. When the bell rings, they fight; when the bell rings again, they stop.
TimeFightChildMeSmallStop
We came to Portland because there was a good alternative public school. Friends who lived there told me about it, and my son loved it. I left his dad and went to work slinging hash in a breakfast diner and working nights tending bar in a biker tavern.
WorkGoodSonSchoolBreakfastMe
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.
AgeWordsMeLanguageMagicEarly
Well, it arose out of two long-term concerns - the first being the possibility of genetic manipulation, nature versus nurture, what constitutes how people get to be how they are.
NaturePeopleManipulationFirstOut
I think genetic research is a fascinating and fertile area.
ResearchThinkGeneticI ThinkArea
The second is the structure and source of cults. They have always haunted me, and I wanted to explore the fundamental notion of giving up responsibility to an outside power.
PowerResponsibilityMeGivingUp
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