To go back to my childhood, I experienced lots of different family cultures, all the while feeling like none of them were mine.

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.

Cultivate blessing. Bless yourself. Bless the whole world. Let it be full with love, peace, joy and happiness.

Trust holds fast, standing firm until deliverance arrives or a solution is found.

Divorce is a process, not an event. It takes months to unfold, a barrage of emotional ups and downs as denial is replaced by grief, grief by anger, and anger gradually eases into acceptance.

Defense doesn't break down on the help, it breaks down on the recovery.

A girl what's born for hangin' ain't likely to be drowned.

I've just been livin' a normal life, going shopping, going out, gettin' pissed. I keep sitting on my arse doing nothing.

Debates conceal rather than reveal the truth. Truth is revealed in solitude.

Unfortunately, unless the job description included a translation of the prologue of The Canterbury Tales, I was dreadfully under-qualified.

The most uninformed mind with a healthy body is happier than the wisest valetudinarian.

I put heavy weight on certainty. It's not risky to buy securities at a fraction of what they're worth.