4 Quotes by Paul La Farge

Clearly, you don't know much about horror, he said. Horror is premised on the experience of what we do not and cannot understand, whereas what you're talking about is mere low-class smut, which every schoolboy has encountered before he's in long pants.

The American id could not be educated, Spinks thought. It needed horror in order to stay awake and to justify its most pleasureful pursuit, the destruction of helpless people who had never done anything wrong.

The paradox of anthropology: to see something, you had to be outside of it, but when you were outside of it, you couldn't see it for what it was.

The worst mistake you can make, Kroeber taught, is to see another person through the lens of your prejudices. And the second-worst mistake is to think you aren't looking though the lens of your prejudices.