"I have a great advantage over many of my colleagues inasmuch as my students bring with them to class their own personal knowledge of national, regional, religious, ethnic, occupational, and family folklore traditions."

"Future orientation is combined with a notion and expectation of progress, and nothing is impossible."

"Cities all over the world are getting bigger as more and more people move from rural to urban sites, but that has created enormous problems with respect to environmental pollution and the general quality of life."

"If a student takes the whole series of my folklore courses including the graduate seminars, he or she should learn something about fieldwork, something about bibliography, something about how to carry out library research, and something about how to publish that research."

"My knee is as strong as it was before, if not stronger, and it's a matter of getting my leg strong. I lost six years of strength in about six month's time, so it's going to take another year or two to get that leg back up to full strength, but I'm good to go so far."

"What I'm suggesting to you is that this could be a renaissance. We may be on the cusp of a future which could provide a tremendous leap forward for humanity."

"Every time you dive, you hope you'll see something new - some new species. Sometimes the ocean gives you a gift, sometimes it doesn't."

"If you don't spend time observing the real world, you can't create a believable fictional one."