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 write drafts. I write from the beginning to the end, and when it's finished, it's done

The way in which mathematicians and physicists and historians talk is quite different, and what a physicist means by physical intuition and what a mathematician means by beauty or elegance are things worth thinking about.

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

I've often been accused of making anthropology into literature, but anthropology is also field research. Writing is central to it.

I agree with Chomsky in almost nothing. When it comes to innate structures and so on, I'm very skeptical

I've written a lot of books which are written from the moon - the view from nowhere.