My instincts are always against people who want to fasten some sort of hegemony onto things.

I was trained in the '50s as a New Critic. I remember what literature was like before the New Critics, when people stood up and talked about Shelley's soul and such things.

I'm an inveterate fox and not a hedgehog, so I always think you should try everything.

I think of myself as a writer who happens to be doing his writing as an anthropologist.

Younger anthropologists have the notion that anthropology is too diverse. The number of things done under the name of anthropology is just infinite; you can do anything and call it anthropology.

The North African mule talks always of his mother's brother, the horse, but never of his father, the donkey, in favor of others supposedly more reputable.