Carl Hoffman > Quotes

“Could the “killing” of Michael have been a nativistic story that a few men had promulgated to increase their status and power in a rapidly changing world?”
― Carl Hoffman, Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism, and Michael Rockefeller's Tragic Quest for Primitive Art

“Contemporary anthropologists long ago abandoned the idea that there is some steady, linear march from primitive to civilized and now discount the very notion that modern, technically advanced cultures are any more “civilized” than ones like the Asmat, with all its complexities.”
― Carl Hoffman, Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism, and Michael Rockefeller's Tragic Quest for Primitive Art

“Those who began swarming into the exotic world, however, were not just acquiring inanimate objects, but walking into something else entirely: a potentially dangerous world of spirits who could make them sick or even kill them, of secrets and meanings whose language they didn’t speak, whose symbols they didn’t understand, and where life and death, literally, hung in the balance.”
― Carl Hoffman, Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism, and Michael Rockefeller's Tragic Quest for Primitive Art

“Van Kessel was an unusual man. He had a huge heart. He was deeply pious, but that faith was built on the idea that men are good, that the world and life are beautiful and full of wonder, that God is a warm, loving presence who tolerates our human eccentricities and imperfections. He believed unequivocally in heaven.”
― Carl Hoffman, Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism, and Michael Rockefeller's Tragic Quest for Primitive Art

“If there was an international language between men in the world, it was about women.”
― Carl Hoffman, The Lunatic Express: Discovering the World... via Its Most Dangerous Buses, Boats, Trains, and Planes

“Richard Burton had gone to Mecca, Gauguin to Tahiti, James Brooke to Sarawak, T. E. Lawrence and Wilfred Thesiger into the desert of the Bedouins.”
― Carl Hoffman, The Last Wild Men of Borneo: A True Story of Death and Treasure

“SIX
Jalan! Jalan! THE HEAT FELT THICK enough to touch. Sweat dripped from my temples and I couldn’t keep the flies off. Smoke from hundreds of cigarettes hung in the air like faded, yellowed lace curtains. I was three decks down, in ekonomi—steerage—on the Bukit Siguntang, a 479-foot-long steel ferry operated by Pelni, the Indonesian government-owned shipping line. The Siguntang officially carried 2,003 souls, all but 300 in third class, but it seemed as if every man, woman, and child in Jakarta were swarming into her belly. There were no beds or bunks—just two open decks full of knee-high, linoleum-covered platforms on which we were supposed”
― Carl Hoffman, The Lunatic Express: Discovering the World . . . via Its Most Dangerous Buses, Boats, Trains, and Planes

“the spokesman of the Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that he could not understand why an aircraft carrier was needed for that purpose. ‘We understand what a father feels at the loss of his son . . . ; from a human perspective we understand how everyone is prepared to help in the search. We do not understand why that would require an aircraft carrier.”
― Carl Hoffman, Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism, and Michael Rockefeller's Tragic Quest for Primitive Art

“But the world is in motion, we are but small pieces, and control is an illusion. We make our own luck, our own destiny, but only to a point, and we never know what could happen at any moment—”
― Carl Hoffman, Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism, and Michael Rockefeller's Tragic Quest for Primitive Art

“As the postmaster, he’d send letters home postmarked with odd dates, like September 35, 1960.”
― Carl Hoffman, Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism, and Michael Rockefeller's Tragic Quest for Primitive Art

“The term 'cathedral forest' is used as a metaphor, to suggest that great woods are like great medieval churches. But I have often felt that this is backward, that the stone cathedrals are a recreation of the forests where our distant ancestors lived. This is why they strike a chord deep within us. The soaring ceilings of a medieval cathedral, the cool, damp air, the dark punctuated by beams of brilliant light coloured by stained glass mimic our ancient home, our Garden of Eden.... A walk in the rain forest is a walk into the mind of God.”
― Carl Hoffman