James A. Michener Quotes

All I can do is play the game the way the cards fall.

It takes courage to know when you ought to be afraid.

You have to be eligible for luck to strike and I think that's a matter of education and preparation and character and all the other solid attributes that sometimes people laugh at.

James A. Michener

All I can do is play the game the way the cards fall.

James A. Michener

I decided (after listening to a "talk radio" commentator who abused, vilified, and scorned every noble cause to which I had devoted my entire life) that I was both a humanist and a liberal, each of the most dangerous and vilified type. I am a humanist because I think humanity can, with constant moral guidance, create a reasonably decent society. I am terrified of restrictive religious doctrine, having learned from history that when men who adhere to any form of it are in control, common men like me are in peril. I do not believe that pure reason can solve the perpetual problems unless it is modified by poetry and art and social vision. So I am a humanist. And if you want to charge me with being the most virulent kind—a secular humanist—I accept the accusation. [Interview, Parade magazine, 24 November 1991]

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

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

Only the rocks live forever, Gray Wolf said.

James A. Michener

I am terrified of restrictive religious doctrine, having learned from history that when men who adhere to any form of it are in control, common men like me are in peril. [The World Is My Home (1991)]

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

Other things being roughly equal, that man lives most keenly who lives in closest harmony with nature. To be wholly alive a man must know storms, he must feel the ocean as his home or the air as his habitation. He must smell the things of earth, hear the sounds of living things and taste the rich abundance of the soil and sea.

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

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

James A. Michener

Writers turn dreams into print.

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

Being goal-oriented instead of self-oriented is crucial. I know so many people who want to be writers. But let me tell you, they really don't want to be writers. They want to have been writers. They wish they had a book in print. They don't want to go through the work of getting the damn book out. There is a huge difference.

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

With my pen I have engraved warrants of citizenship in the most remote corners, for truly the world has been my home.

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

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

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

For of this world one never sees enough and to dine in harmony with nature is one of the gentlest and loveliest things we can do.

James A. Michener

To travel across Spain and finally to reach Barcelona is like drinking a respectable red wine and finishing up with a bottle of champagne.

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 am a humanist because I think humanity can, with constant moral guidance, create reasonably decent societies. I think that young people who want to understand the world can profit from the works of Plato and Socrates, the behaviour of the three Thomases, Aquinas, More and Jefferson — the austere analyses of Immanuel Kant and the political leadership of Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. [The World Is My Home (1991)]

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

Over a hundred German scientists arrived here [Huntsville] at eleven o’clock on an April morning and by nightfall more than sixty had applied for cards at the free library.

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

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

James A. Michener

We seek God so earnestly, Eliav reflected, not to find Him but to discover ourselves.

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