James A. Michener Quotes

64 Sourced Quotes

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

James A. Michener
I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions.

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

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

James A. Michener
The really great writers are people like Emily Brontë who sit in a room and write out of their limited experience and unlimited imagination.

James A. Michener
I was brought up in the great tradition of the late nineteenth century: that a writer never complains, never explains and never disdains.

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
On a bleak wintry morning some years ago I was summoned to the office of our naval attache at the American embassy in Kabul.

James A. Michener
Therefore, men of Polynesia and Boston and China and Mount Fuji and the barrios of the Philippines, do not come to these islands empty-handed, or craven in spirit, or afraid to starve. There is no food here. In these islands there is no certainty. Bring your own food, your own gods, your own flowers and fruits and concepts. For if you come without resources to these islands you will perish... On these harsh terms the islands waited.

James A. Michener
On 24 October 1944 Planet Earth was following its orbit about the sun as it has obediently done for nearly five billion years.

James A. Michener
Russia, France, Germany and China. They revere their writers. America is still a frontier country that almost shudders at the idea of creative expression.

James A. Michener
It is difficult to be king when the gods are changing.

James A. Michener
He had obtained a clearer view of his homeland by leaving it and seeing it through the eyes of others.

James A. Michener
No man leaves where he is and seeks a distant place unless he is in some respect a failure. But having failed in one location and having been ejected, it is possible that in the next he will be a little wiser.

James A. Michener
You don't fight to protect warships or old men. Like the book says, you fight to save your civilization. And so often it seems that civilization is composed mainly of the things women and children want.

James A. Michener
Creative geniuses are a slap-happy lot. Treat Them with respect.

James A. Michener
Scientists are men who dream about doing things. Engineers do them... if you want to be an engineer but find you have ten thumbs, you become a scientist.

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
Look, son, if you calculate on getting me drunk and outsmarting me, quit now, because you simply can't do it.

James A. Michener
Although most of us know Vincent van Gogh in Arles and Paul Gauguin in Tahiti as if they were neighbors -- somewhat disreputable but endlessly fascinating -- none of us can name two French generals or department store owners of that period. I take enormous pride in considering myself an artist, one of the necessaries.

James A. Michener
Things are going to go wrong, and I think we are false to life if we don't portray it. But there is also the hope that some lucky clown is going to come along and stumble into the gold mine. And I think you are also entitled to hold out that hope.

James A. Michener
The chief character in this narrative is the Caribbean Sea, one of the world's most alluring bodies of water, a rare gem among the oceans, defined by the islands that form a chain of lovely jewels to the north and east.

James A. Michener
These are the highlights in a lifetime of following sports. Hilarity. The most sheer fun I ever had in sports was playing volleyball, a game I commend highly... if you have ever seen the great women s teams of Japan and Russia or the equally good men's teams of Cuba and East Germany, you know how exciting this playground game, which requires so little equipment, can be.

James A. Michener
I was a Navy officer writing about Navy problems and I simply stole this lovely Army nurse and popped her into a Navy uniform, where she has done very well for herself.

James A. Michener
I wondered how a man ever got an English girl into bed. What did they do with her hockey stick?

James A. Michener