Quotes by James Michener
The decent thing to do is to
get rid of some of this money.
~James Michener~
I'm not a very good writer,
but I'm an excellent rewriter.
~James 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 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 Michener~
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.
~James Michener~
I love writing. I love the swirl
and swing of words as they
tangle with human emotions.
~James Michener~
Character consists of what you
do on the third and fourth tries.
~James Michener~
America is a nation with many
flaws, but hopes so vast
that only the cowardly would
refuse to acknowledge them.
~James Michener~
If you reject the food, ignore
the customs, fear the religion
and avoid the people, you might
better stay home. You are like
a pebble thrown into water; you
become wet on the surface, but
are never part of the water.
~James Michener~
The really great writers are people
like Emily Bronte who sit in a
room and write out their limited
experience and unlimited imagination.
~James 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 Michener~
An age is called Dark,
not because the light
fails to shine, but
because people
refuse to see it.
~James Michener~
No idea is ever dead until
those who believe in it
say it's dead.
~James 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 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 Michener~
How sweet it is to do nothing all day
long. And after having done so, to rest.
~James Michener~
I thought that perhaps the most
creative mix for a society would be
nine parts solid worker from institutions
like MIT to one part poet from
Marrakech, but in spite of the fact that
I myself had been trained to be one
of the workers, which meant that all
of my sympathies lay with that group,
I would not surrender the poet.
The problem was to find him.
~James Michener~
I think the writer in America doesn't
enjoy a very exalted position:
he's really a third-rate citizen.
~James Michener~
The master in the art of living makes
little distinction between his work and
his play, his labor and his leisure,
his mind and his body, his information
and his recreation, his love and his religion.
He hardly knows which is which. He
simply pursues his vision of excellence
at whatever he does, leaving others to
decide whether he is working or playing.
To him he's always doing both.
~James 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 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 Michener~
song playing....Forever