Arthur Kleinman famous quotes

We are storied folk. Stories are what we are; telling and listening to stories is what we do.
-- Arthur Kleinman

#Writing #Listening #Stories

Stories open up new paths, sometimes send us back to old ones, and close off still others. Telling and listening to stories we too imaginatively walk down those paths - paths of longing, paths of hope, paths of desperation.
-- Arthur Kleinman

#Writing #Listening #Stories

We tend to think of dangers and uncertainties as anomalies in the continuum of life, or irruptions of unpredictable forces into a largely predictable world. I suggest the contrary: that dangers and uncertainties are an inescapable dimension of life. In fact, as we shall come to understand, they make life matter. They define what it means to be human.
-- Arthur Kleinman

#Mean #Thinking #Anomalies

Michael Jackson is an extremely productive ethnographer, a serious reader of phenomenological and existential philosophy, and a remarkable writer at a level that one rarely sees in anthropology. Lifeworlds, unsurprisingly, is no exception. The several essays included here fit into an impressive whole that set out a compelling case for a type of ethnography of which Jackson is one of the masters. The writing is strong and the critical reflections impressive. This book defines an approach to anthropology that is resonant enough to challenge the leading models of our time.
-- Arthur Kleinman

#Strong #Philosophy #Book

Hope is what makes the human condition liveable
-- Arthur Kleinman

#Human Condition #Humans #Conditions

If the English language had been properly organized ... then there would be a word which meant both 'he' and 'she', and I could write, 'If John or Mary comes heesh will want to play tennis', which would save a lot of trouble.

This writing business. Pencils and what-not. Over-rated, if you ask me. Silly stuff. Nothing in it.

Science fiction is a field of writing where, month after month, every printed word implies to hundreds of thousands of people: 'There is change. Look, today's fantastic story is tomorrow's fact.

Listening to the Fifth Symphony of Ralph Vaughan Williams is like staring at a cow for 45 minutes.

I really like listening to music in my car.

The past is so often unknowable not because it is befogged now but because it was befogged then, too, back when it was still the present. If we had been there listening, we still might not have been able to determine exactly what Stanton said. All we know for sure is that everyone was weeping, and the room was full.

Recruiting Station was a story that came as the result of many anxious awakenings during many nights.

I don't recall having any self-awareness about the intricacy of my stories.

There's a great tradition in storytelling that's thousands of years old, telling stories about kings and their palaces, and that's really what I wanted to do.

I love love stories, no matter how dark.