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"I think of myself as a writer who happens to be doing his writing as an anthropologist."
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"I'm a schoolteacher and a writer. So that's what I do."

"I am a writer because writing is the thing I do best."

"And you find as a writer there are certain spots on the planet where you write better than others, and I believe in that. And New Orleans is one of them."

"Good writers are of necessity rare."

"The so-called feminist writers were disgusted with me. I did my thing, and so I guess by feminist standards I'm a feminist. That suits me fine."

"Writers never feel comfortable having labels attached to them, however accurate they are."

"I would say the next imminent hot writers are often the writers from the decade before you were born."
Explore more quotes by Clifford Geertz

"Has feminism made us all more conscious? I think it has. Feminist critiques of anthropological masculine bias have been quite important, and they have increased my sensitivity to that kind of issue."

"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."

"I had a hard time convincing students that they were going to North Africa to understand the North Africans, not to understand themselves."

"I don't write drafts. I write from the beginning to the end, and when it's finished, it's done."

"I've often been accused of making anthropology into literature, but anthropology is also field research. Writing is central to it."

"We need to think more about the nature of rhetoric in anthropology. There isn't a body of knowledge and thought to fall back on in this regard."

"I don't think things are moving toward an omega point; I think they're moving toward more diversity."

"I'm writing a review of three books on feminism and science, and it's about social constructionism. So I would say I'm a social constructionist, whatever that means."

"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."
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