James A. Michener Quotes

[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.

Contrary to what people think, I slave over my books.

It was the silent time before dawn, along the shores of what had been one of the most beautiful lakes in southern Africa.

A group of two dozen nurses completely surrounded by 100,000 unattached American men.

Never forget, son, when you represent Texas, always go first class.

A writer can make a fortune in America, but he can't make a living.

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

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

When this is over, I'm not going to be the same guy. I am going to live as if I were a great man.

I never wrote anything that was published until I was forty.

I have only one bit of advice to beginning writers: be sure your novel is read by Rodgers and Hammerstein.

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

In six pages, I can't even say "Hello.

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.

Animals form an inalienable fragment of nature, and if we hasten the disappearance of even one species, we diminish our world and our place in it.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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)]

Only the rocks live forever, Gray Wolf said.

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.

Very early on in life, I decided the hell with it: material things weren't for me. Christmas would come, and other kids would have all these presents, and it wouldn't bother me a bit.

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