Kyle West

“It was a big mistake for me to take a degree in anthropology anyway, because I can't stand primitive people — they're so stupid.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

“When you find a writer who really is saying something to you, read everything that writer has written and you will get more education and depth of understanding out of that than reading a scrap here and a scrap there and elsewhere. Then go to people who influenced that writer, or those who were related to him, and your world builds together in an organic way that is really marvelous.”
― Joseph Campbell, The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life & Work

“It's not an advantage to be without a PhD. But it's an advantage not to have taken a PhD because of the things that they do to you to get you into the slot that they want you in.”
― Joseph Campbell, The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life & Work

“I think about my education sometimes. I went to the University of Chicago for awhile after the Second World War. I was a student in the Department of Anthropology. At that time they were teaching that there was absolutely no difference between anybody.

They may be teaching that still.

Another thing they taught was that no one was ridiculous or bad or disgusting. Shortly before my father died, he said to me, ‘You know – you never wrote a story with a villain in it.’

I told him that was one of the things I learned in college after the war.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five