I Don't Think Things Are Moving Toward

It May Be In The Cultural Particularities Of People — In Their Oddities — That Some Of The Most Instructive Revelations Of What It Is To Be Generically Human Are To Be Found.

Cultural Analysis Is Intrinsically Incomplete. And, Worse Than That, The More Deeply It Goes The Less Complete It Is.

As A Religious Problem, The Problem Of Suffering Is, Paradoxically, Not How To Avoid Suffering But How To Suffer, How To Make Of Physical Pain, Personal Loss, Worldly Defeat, Or The Helpless Contemplation Of Others' Agony Something Bearable, Supportable- Something As We Say, Sufferable.

I Think Of Myself As A Writer Who Happens To Be Doing His Writing As An Anthropologist

I Never Leave A Sentence Or A Paragraph Until I'm Satisfied With It