Anthropology never has had a distinct subject matter, and because it doesn't have a real method, there's a great deal of anxiety over what it is

I'm an inveterate fox and not a hedgehog, so I always think you should try everything

Has feminism made us all more conscious? I think it has. Feminist critiques of anthropological masculine bias have been quite important, and they have increased my sensitivity to that kind of issue

One of the most significant facts about humanity may finally be that we all begin with the natural equipment to a live a thousand kinds of life but end in the end having lived only one

We don't know what we think until we see what we say.

Man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun.

Culture is public, because meaning is

Most anthropologists are doing straightforward ethnography, and should

Meaning is socially, historically, and rhetorically constructed.

Cultural analysis is intrinsically incomplete. And, worse than that, the more deeply it goes the less complete it is.

My instincts are always against people who want to fasten some sort of hegemony onto things

The notes I can handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes-ah, that is where the art resides.

Only cowards cave. The brave get assassinated.

Love makes you a liar.

You just have to have a simple faith.

​​​​​​You're going to feel uncomfortable in your new world for a bit. It always does feel strange to be knocked out of your comfort zone.

I'm probably a lot closer than perhaps the contents of my early fiction suggest to a jaded Denny's waitress with smoker's-lung-black humor than a ghost hunter.

Give lab rats oxytocin and, according to that meme, they get better at talking about their feelings and sing like Joan Baez.

I needed to carve out my own place and find out what I was going to do

I had no intention of pursuing either the characters or the setting further.

I was just wondering why you stabbed him. Not that I object.