I definitely feel that my brain works differently, and words come out differently, if I have a pencil in my hand, rather than if I have a keyboard.

Anthropological fieldwork is so much like writing a novel. You don't know what the hell is going on.

I've always thought of writing as sort of active communication.

Was it possible in any relationship to not disappoint, to do anything more than only briefly rekindle the initial fatal illusion?

When I finished graduate school, the first George Bush was president, and I really wanted to get out of the country. We'd just gone through the first Gulf War.

I've also done things that put me in odd situations.

There are certain tribes in the middle Sepik that eat raw bat. A certain kind of raw bat is a delicacy.

Anthropologists are great at novelistic observations. I would be thrilled if this novel would encourage anthropologists to write what they see in fictional form.

Perhaps all science is merely self-investigation.

I'm very interested in the way people interact emotionally.

There are very few things I would love to do other than a life of writing, and I think being a singer-songwriter and being an anthropologist are the two other things I can imagine doing.

For the first time in a long time a bit of something I was unfamiliar with crept up inside me.If I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought it was hope.

The less I pray the harder it gets the more I pray the better it goes.

Climbing is a process - like yoga or running. We want to go to the spots where we're barely able to hold on. Those are the climbs that force us to become better athletes and grow as climbers.

I have an abacus at home.

Direct mail - it falls out of every magazine you open these days

We are very lucky to be men because women have a terrible time getting older parts. It's much more difficult.

Pray how does your asparagus perform?

More and more people think of the critic as an indispensable middle man between writer and reader, and would no more read a book alone, if they could help it, than have a baby alone.

He who, in an enlightened and literary society, aspires to be a great poet, must first become a little child.

I always think about what would Christ do in any circumstances.