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.

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.

I love this idea of trying to create that intellectual eroticism. That was what I was working toward all along.

Laugh and the world laughs with you.Fart and you're on your own.

There is too much negativity in the world. Do your best to make sure you aren't contributing to it.

Ah! That glance of yours did some magic on me, you were not aware of. For once I died and was reborn.

When you're young, everything carries a twin charge of novelty and infinite possibility

I've never lost anything, but I have given some things up.

It makes a lot more sense for us to be investing in jobs and education rather than jails and incarceration.

Stop blaming everybody and everything for what's going on. If you really believe that you deserve better, then you would have it.

Life is but a moment, death also is but another.

In essence I'm really a very traditional writer. I subscribe to the notion that, ultimately, characters do drive everything else.

Worse than blind leaders of the blind are bland leaders of the bland.