Margaret Mead Quotes

I view my job more almost as a field biologist or anthropologist, where I'm collecting practices. I'm collecting techniques.

Most anthropologists are doing straightforward ethnography, and should.

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

I tend to be so lost in the work that I don't notice the weather. My partner will come home and say, 'Beautiful day, wasn't it?' and I'll say, 'Was it?' as I won't have noticed the real world at all.

The initial research will be very indiscriminate. I do a lot of reading, buy a stack of books and read and digest them, and then I start doing phone interviews and archival research and then the travelling.

Whenever I am acting, it's everything, you know. If I'm researching a role, I'm completely consumed in that and, between action and cut, I live in this suspended time.

I love to see what real human behavior looks like. I've always envisioned my job as just observing and noting that and, for the purposes of my work, just cutting out the boring parts.

Anthropological fieldwork is so much like writing a novel. You don't know what the hell is going on.

I spent nearly two years in a small village - perhaps seventy families. I've never worked harder or learned so much so fast in my life; as an anthropologist you are at work from when you open your eyes in the morning to when you close them at night.

I love sitting through long things. I mean, 'Gone With the Wind' I will sit through; I love sitting somewhere for four hours, for anything. I love being on a train. I love sitting down for four hours. I think it's the most wonderful thing to be able to sit somewhere and concentrate on something for more than two hours.

I was deep in the zone of practicing almost constantly.

I just kind of do my thing with sort of tunnel vision for the story and my role and how it fits together.

I seldom was ever off my seat on the bench during the game.

When I'm in the middle of making a movie, I have blinders on; it's all about just getting the movie out.

I have interviewed face-to-face, sitting beside me, over 19,000 people.

If I'm doing a scene that requires a lot of focus, I'll just take myself away and do what I have to do.

The job of an anthropologist is to make the familiar strange and to make the strange familiar,

I wanted to be an anthropologist and travel.

Whenever I am applying myself to something, I can't help but be part of it.

I try to physically and mentally immerse myself in whatever it is I am doing. That is good for me as an artist.

When I'm really fixated on a bit of writing, I can easily spend six days without leaving the house and barely leaving my room.

I do tend to lose myself in whatever job I'm doing or hobby I'm into.

When I work on stories, I tend to lose sight of everything else. I forget to pay bills or to shave. I don't change my clothes as often as I should.

When you're acting, it should be the most important thing that's going on. But when you're not, leave it alone.

I enjoy working away from home as it gives me the space to really commit to the character.