James A. Michener Quotes
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I attended seminars where many social issues were discussed abstractly, outside the pressures of an immediate situation, and there I developed certain attitudes which permitted me to face the real thing when it came along.
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The church's job is to provide permanent solace and spiritual leadership to the people as a whole, whatever their government at the moment, so long as it stays within the bounds of moral decency.
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I think the crucial thing in the writing career is to find what you want to do and how you fit in. What somebody else does is of no concern whatever except as an interesting variation.
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Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries.
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It takes courage to know when you ought to be afraid.
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On a bleak wintry morning some years ago I was summoned to the office of our naval attache at the American embassy in Kabul.
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I am the product of the American education system. It is a system that has always been on the lookout for bright boys and girls. It spotted me when I was 14, and I owe a tremendous debt to my alma mater.
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He had obtained a clearer view of his homeland by leaving it and seeing it through the eyes of others.
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I was brought up in the great tradition of the late nineteenth century: that a writer never complains, never explains and never disdains.
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I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent rewriter.
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The arrogance of the artist is a very profound thing, and it fortifies you.
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Only another writer, someone who had worked his heart out on a good book which sold three thousand copies, could appreciate the thrill that overcame me one April morning in 1973 when Dean Rivers of our small college in Georgia appeared at my classroom door.
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Whatever I did, there was always someone around who was better qualified. They just didn't bother to do it.
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If I were a young man today, I might be lured into the moviemaking industry. You can really make a statement there.
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Whenever I start a book, I swear it's going to be a short one. But then it's, 'Who was his grandfather? And how did he get there in the first place? And what kind of animals is he chasing?'
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An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it.
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Silence, much more powerful than before, much more shot through with the meaning of life and the accumulated wisdom of history.
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For this is the journey that men and women make, to find themselves. If they fail in this, it doesn't matter much else what they find.
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My work as a naval officer in World War II enabled me to serve on 49 different South Pacific islands so that I came to know the area about as well as anyone.
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If a man happens to find himself, he has a mansion which he can inhabit with dignity all the days of his life.
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It was the silent time before dawn, along the shores of what had been one of the most beautiful lakes in southern Africa.
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In later years, it would become fashionable to say of the missionaries, 'They came to the islands to do good, and they did right well.' Others made jest of the missionary slogan, 'They came to a nation in darkness; they left it in light,' by pointing out: 'Of course they left Hawaii lighter. They stole every goddamned thing that wasn't nailed down.'
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If you type adeptly with 10 fingers, you're typing faster than your mind is working.
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When I first pitched my Navy tent on the island of Espiritu Santo to the north of Vila, the natives on nearby Malakula were cannibals. Today, they have representation in the United Nations.