“It was a big mistake for me to take a degree in anthropology anyway, because I can't stand primitive people — they're so stupid.”

“That's the point. Every kind of animal thinks its own kind of animal is wonderful. So people getting married think they're wonderful, and that they're going to have a baby-- that's wonderful, when actually they're as ugly as rhinoceroses. Just because we think we're so wonderful doesn't mean we really are. We could be really terrible animals and just never admit it because it would hurt so much.”

“There's no question about it. The arts are an extremely high-risk situation. People are willing to take these extraordinary chances to become writers, musicians or painters, and because of them we have a culture. If this ever stops, our culture will die, because most of our culture, in fact, has been created by people that got paid nothing for it-- People like Edgar Allan Poe, Vincent van Gogh or Mozart. So, yes, it's a very foolish thing to do, notoriously foolish, but it seems human to attempt it anyway.”

“Usually when people talk about the trickle-down theory, it has to do with economics. The richer people at the top of a society become, supposedly, the more wealth there is to trickle down to the people below. It never really works out that way, of course, because if there are 2 things people at the top can't stand, they have to be leakage and overflow.”

“I chose cultural anthropology, since it offered the greatest opportunity to write high-minded balderdash.”

“Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center. [...] Big, undreamed-of things--the people on the edge see them first.”

“I have had all I can stand of not taking myself seriously.”