Michener Quotes

For all its enormous range of space, climate, and physical appearance, and for all the internal squabbles, contentions, and strivings, what you northerners never appreciate ... is that Texas is so big that you can live your life within its limits and never give a damn about what anyone in Boston or San Francisco thinks. ~ James A. Michener

Many people who want to be writers don't really want to be writers. They want to have been writers. They wish they had a book in print. ~ James A. Michener

I don't know who my parents were. I know nothing about my inheritance. I could be Jewish; I could be part Negro; I could be Irish; I could be Russian. I am spiritually a mix anyway, but I did have a solid childhood fortunately, because of some wonderful women who brought me up. I never had a father or a man in the house, and that was a loss, but you live with that loss. ~ James A. Michener

Always remember, John, that you and I live on a minor planet attached to a minor star, at the far edge of a minor galaxy. We live here briefly, and when we're gone, we're forgotten. And one day the galaxies will be gone, too. The only morality that makes sense is to do something useful with the brief time we're allotted. ~ James A. Michener

Don't put off for tomorrow what you can do today because if you enjoy it today, you can do it again tomorrow. ~ James A. Michener

At times, working in big cities far from nature, I have been sick with nesomania, and I think the reason is this: On the islands one has both the time and the inclination to communicate with the stars and the trees and the waves drifting ashore, one lives more intensely. ~ James A. Michener

If your book doesn't keep you up nights when you are writing it, it won't keep anyone up nights reading it. ~ James A. Michener

A ship, like a human being, moves best when it is slightly athwart the wind, when it has to keep its sails tight and attend its course. Ships, like men, do poorly when the wind is directly behind, pushing them sloppily on their way so that no care is required in steering or in the management of sails; the wind seems favorable, for it blows in the direction one is heading, but actually it is destructive because it induces a relaxation in tension and skill. What is needed is a wind slightly opposed to the ship, for then tension can be maintained, and juices can flow and ideas can germinate, for ships, like men, respond to challenge. ~ James A. Michener

I am always interested in why young people become writers, and from talking with many I have concluded that most do not want to be writers working eight and ten hours a day and accomplishing little; they want to have been writers, garnering the rewards of having completed a best-seller. They aspire to the rewards of writing but not to the travail. ~ James A. Michener

I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent rewriter. ~ James A. Michener

Maybe books are best, because you don't have to have money to read... A man can travel all over the world and come back the same kind of fool he was when he started. You can't do that with books. ~ James A. Michener

Wherever a human being goes, there is a challenge. Be the best man you can, and your gods will look with favor upon you. ~ James A. Michener

Never forget, son, when you represent Texas, always go first class. ~ James A. Michener

I never wrote anything that was published until I was forty. ~ James A. Michener

No man leaves where he is and seeks a distant place unless he is in some respect a failure. ~ James A. Michener

MOST NATIONS HAVE AT ONE TIME OR OTHER BOTH condoned and practiced slavery. Greece and Rome founded their societies on it. India and Japan handled this state of affairs by creating untouchable classes which continue to this day. Arabia clung to formal slavery longer than most, while black countries like Ethiopia and Burundi were notorious. In the New World each colonial power devised a system precisely suited to its peculiar needs and in conformance with its national customs. The ~ James A. Michener

An age is called Dark, not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it. ~ James A. Michener

About a billion years ago, long before the continents had separated to define the ancient oceans, or their own outlines had been determined, a small protuberance jutted out from the northwest corner of what would later become North America. ~ James A. Michener

Writers turn dreams into print. ~ James A. Michener

What did I learn in my travels? In whatever foreign country I visited I met dreamers who longed to reach America and its promise of an enriched life so I knew we had a country rich in opportunity, but I also met those brilliant Jews already in America who had been denied that promise. ~ James A. Michener

As a writer I have persisted in my uncertainty, alternating between novels which could charitably be considered literature and world reporting which by another stretch of objective standards might be called history. ~ James A. Michener

I had learned volleyball in the Navy, where all the captains and admirals wanted to be spikers, and I found then that a man who can subdue his own desires and master the art of serving others can make himself invaluable. In choosing sides the team captain always chose the good spikers on the first and second choice, but then the spikers would grab his arm and whisper, 'Take Michener.' I was never chosen lower than third, because I was needed. I wasn't good, but I was faithful. ~ James A. Michener

I do believe that everyone growing up faces differential opportunities. With me, it was books and travel and some good teachers. ~ James A. Michener

It may seem contradictory, but in the languid tropics one spends more time contemplating those great good things of sound and sight and smell. ~ James A. Michener

I have never thought of myself as a good writer. Anyone who wants reassurance of that should read one of my first drafts. But I'm one of the world's great rewriters. ~ James A. Michener

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 ~ James A. Michener

I can no longer take war or promotion or big income or a large house seriously. I reject empire and Vietnam and placing a man on the moon. I deny time payments and looking like the girl next door and church weddings and a great deal more. If you want to blame such rejection on grass, you can do so. I charge it to awakening. ~ James A. Michener

If a man happens to find himself, he has a mansion which he can inhabit with dignity all the days of his life. ~ James A. Michener

But the new priest in town, this Father Ybarra, who had come north to see if the missions should be closed down, absolutely forbade her to step foot inside Santa Teresa: "This place is not for women. If God had intended you to enter these precincts, he would have made women friars. ~ James A. Michener

It was his opinion that a man had to wait until he was dead to know the meaning of God, unless he happened to have known the sea in his youth. ~ James A. Michener

For this is the journey that men make, to find themselves. If they fail in this, it doesn't matter much what else they find. ~ James A. Michener

When I was growing up, my house was filled with books. My mother was an educator, and my father was a history buff, so our home was a virtual library, covering every author from Beverly Cleary to James Michener. ~ Jeff Kinney

I live for the few minutes I can talk with a sensible human being, but every time I do, I feel worse than before. ~ James A. Michener

Luddites were those frenzied traditionalists of the early 19th century who toured [England] wrecking new weaving machines on the theory that if they were destroyed ... old jobs and old ways of life could be preserved ... At certain times in his life each man is tempted to become a Luddite, for there is always something he would like to go back to. But to be against all change-against change in the abstract-is folly. ~ James A. Michener

Don't ever buy Monks Fishing, Stanley. ~ James A. Michener

I don't know anyone who remembers meeting their parents when they were a baby so i'm just like everybody else. -Zoey (100% Real) ~ Tara Michener

QUAKER: Since God maintains direct accessibility with every human life and offers instant and uncomplicated guidance, the intervention of priests and ministers is unnecessary. The intercession of saints is not required. Musical chanting and pretentious prayers fulfill no need. God is not attracted by incense or ostentation or robes or colorful garments or hierarchies. CATHOLIC: You pretty well abolish my church. QUAKER ~ James A. Michener

Chesapeake Bay is like a beautiful woman. There's no humiliation from which she cannot recover. ~ James A. Michener

America is a nation with many flaws, but hopes so vast that only the cowardly would refuse to acknowledge them. ~ James A. Michener

I think the bottom line is that if you get through a childhood like mine, it's not at all bad. Obviously, you come out a pretty tough turkey, and you have had all the inoculations you need to keep you on a level keel for the rest of your life. The sad part is, most of us don't come out. ~ James A. Michener

A Roman came to Rabbi Gimzo the Water Carrier, and asked, "What is this study of the law that you Jews engage in?" and Gimzo replied, "I shall explain. There were two men on a roof, and they climbed down the chimney. One's face became sooty. The other's not. Which one washed his face?" The Roman said, "That's easy, the sooty one, of course." Gimzo said, "No. The man without the soot looked at his friend, saw that the man's face was dirty, assumed that his was too, and washed it." Cried the Roman, "Ah ha! So that's the study of law. Sound reasoning." But Gimzo said, "You foolish man, you don't understand. Let me explain again. Two men on a roof. They climb down a chimney. One's face is sooty, the other's not. Which one washes?" The Roman said, "As you just explained, the man without the soot." Gimzo cried,"No, you foolish one! There was a mirror on the wall and the man with the dirty face saw how sooty it was and washed it." The Roman said, "Ah ha! So that's the study of law! Conforming to the logical." But Rabbi Gimzo said, "No, you foolish one. Two men climbed down the chimney. One's face became sooty? The other's not? That's impossible. You're wasting my time with such a proposition." And the Roman said, "So that's the law! Common sense." And Gimzo said, "You foolish man! Of course it was possible. When the first man climbed down the chimney he brushed the soot away. So the man who followed found none to mar him." And the Roman cried, "That's brilliant, Rabbi Gimzo. Law is ~ James A. Michener

The city of Los Angeles is now some twenty-four hundred miles south of central Alaska, and since it is moving slowly northward as the San Andreas fault slides irresistibly along, the city is destined eventually to become part of Alaska. If ~ James A. Michener

From the earliest days of the nation anyone with an intelligence equal to that of sparrows had realized that the peninsula ought logically to be united as one state, but historical accident had decreed that one portion be assigned to Maryland, whose citizens despised the Eastern Shore and considered it a backwater; one portion to the so-called state of Delaware, which never could find any reasonable justification for its existence; and the final portion to Virginia, which allowed its extreme southern fragment of the Eastern Shore to become the most pitiful orphan in America. ~ James A. Michener

There is only one sensible way to think of the Pacific Ocean today. It is the highway between Asia and America, and whether we with it or not, from now on there will be immense traffic along that highway. ~ James A. Michener

I doubt, dearest child, that you could ever marry a Frenchman. They're not dependable. I've never believed that they're serious Catholics." He ~ James A. Michener

I can't remember who said it - I think it was Allan Gurganus when he was visiting the Michener Center - but he told us to "spend [our] gold," meaning, put everything you have into a story. Other "gold" will be waiting for you for your next project. ~ Mary J. Miller

Only the rocks live forever, Gray Wolf said. ~ James A. Michener

Mr Michener, as timeless as a stack of National Geographics, is the ultimate Summer Writer. Just as one goes back to the cottage in Maine, so one goes back to one's Michener. ~ Wilfrid Sheed

It was rather that he discovered for himself the inherent undesirability of becoming a leader; it was an act of pomp engaged in by lesser men who enjoyed bedecking themselves in feathers. He would let others use office to proclaim their feats. He would concentrate on the feat itself, doing what had to be done ... in silence. ~ James A. Michener

The permanent temptation of life is to confuse dreams with reality. The permanent defeat of life comes when dreams are surrendered to reality. ~ James A. Michener

If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion, and avoid the people, you might better stay home. ~ James A. Michener

A soldier lives always for the next battle, because he knows that before it arrives impossible changes can occur in his favor. ~ James A. Michener

The great writers, Conrad, Maugham and Melville, spent only a few years in the South Seas, but their memory of those waters was indestructible; for the nature of life in the islands commands attention to the vivid world and its even more vivid inhabitants. ~ James A. Michener

I would suppose I learned how to write when I was very young indeed. When I read a child's book about the Trojan War and decided that the Greeks were really a bunch of frauds with their tricky horses and the terrible things they did, stealing one another's wives, and so on, so at that very early age, I re-wrote the ending of the Iliad so that the Trojans won. And boy, Achilles and Ajax got what they wanted, believe me. And thereafter, at frequent intervals, I would write something. It was really quite extraordinary. Never of very high merit, but the daringness of it was. ~ James A. Michener

Unless you think you can do better than Tolstoy, we don't need you. ~ James A. Michener

First buy a cowboy hat and boots. Then you're on your way to being a Texan. ~ James A. Michener

When men ignite in their hearts a religious fury, they inflict at the same time a blindness on their eyes. ~ James A. Michener

Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries. ~ James A. Michener

I kept careful record of the impact of religion on the election in my county. The religious issue permeated every meeting I conducted. It influenced Republicans and Democrats alike. Ministers preached politics publicly and churches distributed the most vicious electioneering materials. Practically no one I met escaped the pressure of this overriding problem and both parties were ultimately forced to make their major calculations with the religious question a foremost consideration. ~ James A. Michener

Any spot for which a man's forebears have bled and died will forever be his homeland. ~ James A. Michener

In a small Polish farm community, during the fall planting season of 1981, events occurred which electrified the world, sending reverberations of magnitude to capitals as diverse as Washington, Peking and especially Moscow. ~ James A. Michener

The South Pacific is memorable because when you are in the islands you simply cannot ignore nature. You cannot avoid looking up at the stars, large as apples on a new tree. You cannot deafen your ear to the thunder of the surf. The bright sands, the screaming birds, and the wild winds are always with you. ~ James A. Michener

And he began to see his world as an amusing place where ridiculous things happened and where a man or woman could obey all the rules and avoid all the perils but still fall into some absurd situation at which their neighbors and the spirits themselves had to laugh and not furtively either but with great guffaws. The world was tragic, and fine men and strong animals died arbitrarily, but it was also so preposterous that sometimes the crests of mountains seemed to bend together in laughter. ~ James A. Michener

The rules seem to be these: If you have written a successful novel, everyone invites you to write short stories. If you have written some good short stories, everyone wants you to write a novel. But nobody wants anything until you have already proved yourself by being published somewhere else. ~ James A. Michener

There are no insoluble problems. Only time-consuming ones. ~ James A. Michener

But it was strange - generation after generation these quiet women with their demure bearing and fearless intelligence seemed to make the lasting wives. Their husbands appeared to love them as much at seventy as they had at seventeen: I wonder if there's something to the way they're brought up? Always speaking their minds and taking part in things? ~ James A. Michener

It heartens me to think of Verdi who composed thundering operas in his eighties; Michelangelo who did fine work in his ninetieth year, and Titian, who painted better than ever in his one hundredth. ~ James A. Michener

I was once asked if I'd like to meet the president of a certain country. I said, "No, but I'd love to meet some sheepherders." The sheepherders, farmers and taxi drivers are often the most interesting people. ~ James A. Michener

western paintings did not occur. ~ James A. Michener

I never found a way to tell a good man from an evil one except by what he did. It's popular now to say all men are good and evil both. But I don't believe that. Men are on one side or the other. Of course, sometimes a good man will do an evil thing. But he regrets it. And so will you, whenever you do wrong. And if you do wrong too often, regrets come so easily that you forget what wrong is. Then you've become an evil man, and you're all tied up inside, and you work and fight against others. And do you know why? Because you have no peace in your heart to satisfy you when you are alone. ~ James A. Michener

Because I am for them, Commander, because their ancestors stood up to that Nazi, Bligh, just like I would be for one little Jew, terrified and hungry, crossing the Pyrenees to get away to freedom from the Gestapo. One little Jew. You wouldn't have him in your house. He stinks, he has lice. But, you know what, Commander? I am for him, every time. And he would punch me in the shoulder and lug his M-1 up onto the ridge, night after night. ~ James A. Michener

Public libraries have been a mainstay of my life. They represent an individual's right to acquire knowledge; they are the sinews that bind civilized societies the world over. Without libraries, I would be a pauper, intellectually and spiritually. ~ James A. Michener

Jan had never seen a really sumptuous establishment like Lancut, but he had worked often at Castle Gorka and could see the vast difference between how a count lived, with his fifty horses and forty servants, and how his peasants lived, with meat once a year, a new suit of clothes once every ten years, little medicine and less education. ~ James A. Michener

I have often been mildly amused when I think that the great American novel was not written about New England or Chicago. It was written about a white whale in the South Pacific. ~ James A. Michener

The South Pacific is not a paradise, in the sense that Eden wasn't either. There are always apples and snakes. But it is a wonderful place to live. The green vales of Tahiti, the hills of Guadalcanal, the towering peaks about Wau, and the noonday brilliance of Rabaul have enchanted many white travelers who have stayed on for many years and built happy lives. Often on a cool night when the beer was plentiful and the stories alluring, we have envied the men and women of the South Pacific ~ James A. Michener

Scientists dream about doing great things. Engineers do them. ~ James A. Michener

The sense of belonging is one of the great gifts men get in battle. ~ James A. Michener

At last he found the branching stream that flowed down from Blue Valley, and now he was guided by the little stone beaver that climbed the cliff. ~ James A. Michener

He was reminded that men may be angels, but they are animals, too. They are driven by uncontrollable forces and only the love of other people makes it possible for them to survive. Men are lonely and are stricken in the night. They lock their jaws against themselves. They scream like animals, and even though they ridicule love and the forces of destruction, they are themselves theatres for the operation of such forces. ~ James A. Michener

I think young people ought to seek the experience that is going to knock them off center. ~ James A. Michener

If a young aspirant had a modicum of skill and a busy typewriter she or he would sooner or later get a foothold in one of the magazines and a leaping start on the ladder upward. ~ James A. Michener

It took her three seconds-one, two, three-to know that her destiny required her to join this man, and his gun and his wagon, and his waiting horses. She had no conception of what was being asked of her, but she knew that there could be no viable alternative. She dashed inside the orphanage and grabbed the few things that belonged to her. ~ James A. Michener

I'm at a camp with over 100 girls 11 to 13 years old, around my own age, and I feel like my parents are my only friends. -Mackenzie ~ Tara Michener

You love the Hawaiians as potential Christians, but you despise them as people. I am proud to say that I have come to exactly the opposite conclusion, and it is therefore appropriate that I should be expelled from a mission where love is not. ~ James A. Michener

The way we react to the Indian will always remain this nation's unique moral headache. It may seem a smaller problem than our Negro one, and less important, but many other sections of the world have had to grapple with slavery and its consequences. There's no parallel for our treatment of the Indian. In Tasmania the English settlers solved the matter neatly by killing off every single Tasmanian, bagging the last one as late as 1910. Australia had tried to keep its aborigines permanently debased - much crueler than anything we did with our Indians. Brazil, about the same. Only in America did we show total confusion. One day we treated Indians as sovereign nations. Did you know that my relative Lost Eagle and Lincoln were photographed together as two heads of state? The next year we treated him as an uncivilized brute to be exterminated. And this dreadful dichotomy continues. ~ James A. Michener

We all hurt other people, especially those we love...civilized people were the ones who had learned to hurt according to rules. ~ James A. Michener

You are real! Everyone has to be different or the world would be really boring. If we all looked the same, then no one could tell us apart. -Janelle ~ Tara Michener

Hawaii once had a rat problem. Then, somebody hit upon a brilliant solution. import mongooses from India. Mongooses would kill the rats. It worked. Mongooses did kill the rats. Mongooses also killed chickens, young pigs, birds, cats, dogs, and small children. There have been reports of mongooses attacking motorbikes, power lawn mowers, golf carts, and James Michener. in Hawaii now, there are as many mongooses as there once were rats. Hawaii had traded its rat problem for a mongoose problem. Hawaii was determined nothing like that would ever happen again.
How could Leigh-Cheri draw for Gulietta the appropriate analogy between Hawaii's rodents and society at large? Society had a crime problem. It hired cops to attack crime. Now society has a cop problem. ~ Tom Robbins

The arrogance of the artist is a very profound thing, and it fortifies you. ~ James A. Michener

Self-abuse is shockingly common, especially among people who have been conditioned to believe that they are to blame when things go wrong. ~ Anna J. Michener

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. ~ James A. Michener

As a boy I was saved from a life of ignorance by my little hometown library.
As a college student I was educated in the
stacks of the Swarthmore library. And as an adult I use libraries daily in my search for the facts and the enlightenment I use in writing my books.
In fact, I like libraries so much that I
married a librarian. ~ James A. Michener

As a younger man I wrote for eight years without ever earning a nickel which is a long apprenticeship, but in that time I learned a lot about my trade. ~ James A. Michener

Organizations like the church or General Motors promote a man up and up until he reaches a spot which he is obviously incapable of filling, and there they lay him to rest. ~ James A. Michener

When I was in the third grade, I did my very best to fail every class so that the kids would like me and stop calling me a teacher's pet. It did not work out for me, though. My best attempts at failure in school garnered me an A- at best, and at my worst, I won awards for being the student of the month. -Mackenzie ~ Tara Michener

And wherever you go on the face of the earth have the humility to think that a thousand years ago someone pretty much like you stood there and a thousand years from now a boy like you will be there. And in two thousand years boys and places and people will have been pretty much the same. ~ James A. Michener

Religious hatreds ought not to be propagated at all, but certainly not on a tax-exempt basis. ~ James A. Michener

Looking at my reflection tonight, I see a new girl staring back at me. She has big hair and big eyes and a big heart. Not only is she the perfect size and pretty ... she is smart. -Mackenzie ~ Tara Michener

Where, indeed? Captain Vincent Reed had been born in the city of Richmond, Virginia, of northern parents who were stationed there by the telegraph company. He had attended West Point and he thought he knew something about warfare, having served under General Pope in his long and futile struggle against General Stonewall Jackson. Those men were fighters who would face the enemy till the last bullet was fired, but neither would participate in such a slaughter.
Reed had had his troops in position. He was quite prepared to rush in for the kill, and he had positioned himself so that he would be in the vanguard when his men made their charge against the guns of the young braves threatening the left flank. But when he saw that the enemy had no weapons, that even their bows and arrows were not at hand, and that he was supposed to chop down little girls and old women, he rebelled on the spot, taking counsel with no one but his own conscience. ~ James A. Michener

I am sure old men forget what it was to be young and to be wholly in love. Not even I can remember those breathless moments. That's why they give old men important jobs and big salaries and orchestras to lead. To pay us back for the terrible loss we have sustained. ~ James A. Michener