My instincts are always against people who want to fasten some sort of hegemony onto things

I had a hard time convincing students that they were going to North Africa to understand the North Africans, not to understand themselves.

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

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

Culture is public, because meaning is

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

Younger anthropologists have the notion that anthropology is too diverse. The number of things done under the name of anthropology is just infinite; you can do anything and call it anthropology