In my introductory course, Anthropology 160, the Forms of Folklore, I try to show the students what the major and minor genres of folklore are, and how they can be analyzed.

Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

Ancestor worship, or filial piety so characteristic of Asian cultures, for example, does not really resonate with Americans who favor children, not grandparents.

Life, it seems, is nothing if not a series of initiations, transitions, and incorporations.

My academic identity is that of a folklorist, and for many years I have taught only folklore courses.

Future orientation is combined with a notion and expectation of progress, and nothing is impossible.

Americans often have trouble enjoying the present moment.

I mentioned that one of the tripartite formulas in American worldview involves time: past, present, and future.

Americans have a penchant for the future and tend to disregard the past.

Polls are frequently taken to try to tease out or determine likely directions and trends, but once taken, they belong to the past, requiring that new polls be taken.

When we have to change an opinion about any one, we charge heavily to his account the inconvenience he thereby causes us.

Maybe if the empty space inside her was filled with love there'd be no room for sad and dark things.

She liked the sharp salty smell of the air, and the vastness of horizons bounded only by a vault of azure sky above.

If there had been no troublemakers, no Dissenters, we should still be living in caves.

In the hands of a genius, engineering turns to magic, philosophy becomes poetry, and science pure imagination.

Doing scripted acting is a challenge to me. I can't remember things too good, so remembering lines is a challenge to your boy.

Just because you believe it doesn't make it so.

Some of our greatest historical and artistic treasures we place in museums; others, we take for walks.

I don't think Auden liked my poetry very much, he's very Anglican.

He's a soldier; and for one to say a soldier lies, is stabbing.