Katherine Dunn Quotes

Author Image

Katherine Dunn

Profession : Novelist

Birth : October 24, 1945

Women are real. Our reality covers the whole human megillah, from feeble to fierce, from bad to good, from endangered to dangerous. We don't just deserve power, we have it. And power in this and every other society is not just the capacity to benefit those around us.

Katherine Dunn

It is time to recognize the variability of females, just as we do males.

Katherine Dunn

We live with a distinct double standard about male and female aggression. Women's aggression isn't considered real. It isn't dangerous; it's only cute. Or it's always self-defense or otherwise inspired by a man. In the rare case where a woman is seen as genuinely responsible, she is branded a monster - an 'unnatural' woman.

Katherine Dunn

I'm like every waitress in every diner; I'm like every mom driving her kids to school. I'm nothing special at all.

Katherine Dunn

I'm just a regular Joe.

Katherine Dunn

In a really good, closely matched situation, the style of the boxer is every bit as explicit and specific to him as a painter's hand.

Katherine Dunn

Some writers get snooty about what happens when their books are adapted to film, but I don't feel that way.

Katherine Dunn

Film is a different art form with its own demands and its own riches.

Katherine Dunn

Each reader projects their own version of the experience inside their skull as they go along. It's probably true that no two people read exactly the same book.

Katherine Dunn

A film adaptation is, I hope, the director's version. A new creation.

Katherine Dunn

Donald Westlake's lean prose and deadpan delivery are engaging, as always.

Katherine Dunn

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.

Katherine Dunn

I don't think there is such a thing as an idea without words, because your language is your thought.

Katherine Dunn

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.

Katherine Dunn

I thought that was actually kind of boring, that search for perfection.

Katherine Dunn

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.

Katherine Dunn

I've met some of the most interesting, dimensional, and kind people of my life in that subculture and around the sport. And it seems to me that boxing is one of those structures that is designed to promote harmony. I think that it is a stove that contains that fire in us and makes it safe and useful.

Katherine Dunn

I'd always been fascinated by boxing and became very engaged with it through my husband, actually. But I started to write about it because so many decent, righteous people wanted it banned.

Katherine Dunn

I know that some of the finest writing I've ever read has been sports writing, whatever the topic was, whatever the sport they were writing about. It seems to be an area where people are allowed a little more leeway than when they're reporting on traffic jams and city-council meetings.

Katherine Dunn

It's not unfair, I think, to describe boxers as a demographic little given to literary entanglement. In general, with exceptions, they prefer movies.

Katherine Dunn