Alyssa Macpherson

“Disappointment tells us what we truly wanted. And to want is to be alive.”
― Kat Dunn, Hungerstone

“I do not need to contain my appetites.

What is a monster but a creature of agency?”
― Kat Dunn, Hungerstone

“I caught sight of myself in a mirror as I went downstairs and my heart sank. A beautiful dress on an ugly woman still made an ugly woman.”
― Kat Dunn, Bitterthorn

“A vampire is a creature of total want, of pure appetite, an antithesis to our self-denial, and I find myself picking through the bones of the story about the tension between these two states. Appetite is a dirty word for women, a cardinal sin. For food and sex, yes, but also for power, for ambition, for violence. What is Carmilla but a woman unleashed on any limits on her appetites? Does it make her monstrous? Is what we celebrate in men always monstrous in women? Is it also not monstrous to starve ourselves, to kill our appetite until we embody a living death?”
― Kat Dunn, Hungerstone