‎ When a person is born we rejoice, and when they're married we jubilate, but when they die we try to pretend nothing has happened.

The liberals have not softened their view of actuality to make themselves live closer to the dream, but instead sharpen their perceptions and fight to make the dream actuality.

... some veil between childhood and the present is necessary. If the veil is withdrawn, the artistic imagination sickens and dies, the prophet looks in the mirror with a disillusioned and cynical sneer, the scientist goes fishing.

I have spent most of my life studying the lives of other peoples - faraway peoples - so that Americans might better understand themselves.

There is no greater power in the world than the zest of a postmenopausal woman.

If a fish were an anthropologist, the last thing it would discover would be water.

Wonder is very important, because if we never wondered, we would never get to the point of asking questions. Yet wonder may lead people to write poetry or to paint pictures or to pray, as well as to ask the kinds of questions about the world and themselves that can be answered by science.