The profession of shaman has many advantages. It offers high status with a safe livelihood free of work in the dreary, sweaty sense. In most societies it offers legal privileges and immunities not granted to other men. But it is hard to see how a man who has been given a mandate from on High to spread tidings of joy to all mankind can be seriously interested in taking up a collection to pay his salary; it causes one to suspect that the shaman is on the moral level of any other con man. But it is a lovely work if you can stomach it.

I was no fool; I was aware that when another man is too anxious to force money on one, it is time to examine the cards, for there is almost certainly something illegal, or dangerous, or both, involved in the matter.

Don't handicap your children by making their lives easy.

The shamans are forever yacking about their snake oil miracles. I prefer the real McCoy, a pregnant woman.

All human behavior, all human motivations, all man’s hopes and fears, were heavily colored and largely controlled by mankind’s tragic and oddly beautiful pattern of reproduction.

I was there to see beautiful naked women. So was everybody else. It's a common failing.

Who is more real? Homer or Ulysses? Shakespeare or Hamlet? Burroughs or Tarzan?