I think of myself as a writer who happens to be doing his writing as an anthropologist

I don't feel that an atmosphere of debate and total disagreement and argument is such a bad thing. It makes for a vital and alive field.

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

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

It may be in the cultural particularities of people — in their oddities — that some of the most instructive revelations of what it is to be generically human are to be found.

I never leave a sentence or a paragraph until I'm satisfied with it

I think the American university system still seems to be the best system in the world