You write the facts as you see them, and there isn't a lull with a lot of description. No wonder people like to write about murder mysteries and dead bodies!

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.

One has to develop a sense of humor to cope.

A story doesn't live until it is imagined in someone's mind.

Here among the constant ruins and rebuilding of civilizations lies the coexistence of diversity and intolerance.

Let the famous not denounce fame. Far from being empty and meaningless, it fills those it touches with divine power.

This day I see that pretty much all my correspondences are love letters.

I'm a driven perfectionist, very self-critical.

Venus is kind to creatures as young as we;We know not what we do, and while we're youngWe have the right to live and love like gods.

Every boy should have two things: a dog and a mother who lets him have one

The good painter is the one who buries a color every day.

An inability to stay quiet is one of the conspicuous failings of mankind.