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

I think the perception of there being a deep gulf between science and the humanities is false

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

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 was trained in the '50s as a New Critic. I remember what literature was like before the New Critics, when people stood up and talked about Shelley's soul and such things

The point of literary criticism in anthropology is not to replace research, but to find out how it is that we are persuasive.

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.