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The culture is just so coarse that you have to take it to that level and people will be like, 'Whoa!' And then you can make people think about stuff. It's kind of like shock therapy.

Cultural concepts are one of the most fascinating things about historical fiction. There's always a temptation, I think, among some historical writers to shade things toward the modern point of view. You know, they won't show someone doing something that would have been perfectly normal for the time but that is considered reprehensible today.

It is a sure sign that a culture has reached a dead end when it is no longer intrigued by its myths.

It is not just the Great Works of mankind that make a culture. It is the daily things, like what people eat and how they serve it.

Those who speak of our culture as dead or dying have a quarrel with life, and I think they cannot understand its terms, but must endlessly repeat the projection of their own desires.

We only exist in terms of how we think we exist. Meaning every cultural development is fabricated and can be fabricated.

A culture produces ideas which are being explored, which of interest to that culture at that moment. And I think one of the things a writer can do is to take those ideas and go a bit further with them.

Cultural anthropology is more and more rapidly getting to realize itself as a strictly historical science.

It wouldn't be fair to cast aspersions on an entire cultural movement based on the actions of a few. To quote my grandfather, 'One bad apple don't spoil the whole bunch.'