I don't like stories where I'm being given pages and pages of detail.

Anthropological fieldwork is so much like writing a novel. You don't know what the hell is going on.

I've always thought of writing as sort of active communication.

Was it possible in any relationship to not disappoint, to do anything more than only briefly rekindle the initial fatal illusion?

When I finished graduate school, the first George Bush was president, and I really wanted to get out of the country. We'd just gone through the first Gulf War.

I've also done things that put me in odd situations.

There are certain tribes in the middle Sepik that eat raw bat. A certain kind of raw bat is a delicacy.

Anthropologists are great at novelistic observations. I would be thrilled if this novel would encourage anthropologists to write what they see in fictional form.

Perhaps all science is merely self-investigation.

I'm very interested in the way people interact emotionally.

There are very few things I would love to do other than a life of writing, and I think being a singer-songwriter and being an anthropologist are the two other things I can imagine doing.

There's something in everyone only they know.

Poverty cannot deprive us of many consolations. It cannot rob us of the affection we have for each other, or degrade us in our own opinion, of in that of any person, whose opinion we ought to value.

There's a new iPad out...People are going nuts for this thing...And, today, Mitt Romney said, 'It's a flat piece of white plastic. If you can love it, why not me?'

I can really fish - I've been fishing since I was a kid.

Compilers resemble gluttonous eaters who devour excessive quantities of healthy food just to excrete them as refuse.

They said it was against the rules to take sides on a controversial issue. I said, 'I wish you had told me that during World War II, when I took sides against Hitler.

I used to pretend that I was just passing through this family on my way to my real one.

If I can help and influence girls who are going through body-image issues then I think that's amazing.

You never know what someone is dealing with behind closed doors. You only know what you see or what you think you see.

When it comes to hockey, it's been in my blood since I was 3 or 4 years old. I love coaching the kids, especially at that level.