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Paul La Farge Quotes

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...

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...

Tags: smut

As a Freudian, I'm not supposed to use words like evil; my business is with instinct, memory, and desire. Nevertheless, I've been wondering, lately, whether evil might exist. If it does, I've been thi...

Paul La Farge

As a Freudian, I'm not supposed to use words like evil; my business is with instinct, memory, and desire. Nevertheless, I've been wondering, lately, whether evil might exist. If it does, I've been thi...

Tags: evil, freudian

About Author
Paul Bayard La Farge (November 17, 1970 – January 18, 2023) was an American novelist and essayist. He wrote five novels: The Artist of the Missing (1999), Haussmann, or the Distinction (2001), The Facts of Winter (2005), Luminous Airplanes (2011), and The Night Ocean (2017), all of which, particularly Haussmann, earned positive critical attention. His essays, fiction and reviews have appeared in publications such as The Believer, The Village Voice, Harper's, and The New Yorker.

Always, always, he was holding something. He held his students' attention when they drooped, sleepy with cheap beer, sunlight, tennis. He held a dictionary in his lap. He held the Culhua Mexica in his...

Paul La Farge

Always, always, he was holding something. He held his students' attention when they drooped, sleepy with cheap beer, sunlight, tennis. He held a dictionary in his lap. He held the Culhua Mexica in his...

Tags: history

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.

Paul La Farge

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.

Tags: paradox

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 prejud...

Paul La Farge

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 prejud...

Tags: prejudice

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

Paul La Farge

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

Scratch a professor and you find a paranoiac, Barlow thought. But scratch a dean and you find a con artist.

Paul La Farge

Scratch a professor and you find a paranoiac, Barlow thought. But scratch a dean and you find a con artist.

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 anythi...

Paul La Farge

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 anythi...