James A. Michener Quotes (55 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

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James A. Michener

James A. Michener: 55 quotes7 likes

Famous James A. Michener Quotes

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

As quoted in Good Advice (1982) by William Safire and Leonard Safir. Original appearance in Holiday magazine, March 1956, pp. 40-51.

“An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it.”

James A. Michener book Space

Space (1982)

“Leonid Brezhnev needed a haircut, so he went down to the ground floor of the Kremlin and plopped into the chair. It was understood that at such times the barber was to say not a word, just cut hair. But this morning, after a few snips he said: "Comrade Brezhnev what are you going to do about Poland?" No reply. Some minutes later: "Comrade Brezhnev, what about Poland?" Again no reply. Then, pretty soon: "Comrade Brezhnev, you've got to do something about Poland." At this Brezhnev jumps out of the chair and tears away the cloth: "What's all this about Poland?" and the barber says: "It makes my job so much easier," and Brezhnev screams: "What do you mean?" and the barber says: "Every time I mention Poland your hair stands straight up on end."”

James A. Michener book Poland

page 567
Poland (1983)

“I think young people ought to seek that differential experience that is going to knock them off dead center. I was a typical American school boy. I happened to get straight A's and be pretty good in sports. But I had no great vision of what I could be. And I never had any yearning.
My job was to live through Friday afternoon, get through the week, and eat something. And then along came these differential experiences that you don't look for, that you don't plan for, but, boy, you better not miss them. The things that make you bigger than you are. The things that give you a vision. The things that give you a challenge.”

James A. Michener

Academy of Achievement interview (1991)
Context: I do believe that everyone growing up faces differential opportunities. With me, it was books and travel and some good teachers. With somebody else, it may be a boy scout master. With somebody else, it will be a clergyman. Somebody else, an uncle who was wiser than the father. I think young people ought to seek that differential experience that is going to knock them off dead center. I was a typical American school boy. I happened to get straight A's and be pretty good in sports. But I had no great vision of what I could be. And I never had any yearning.
My job was to live through Friday afternoon, get through the week, and eat something. And then along came these differential experiences that you don't look for, that you don't plan for, but, boy, you better not miss them. The things that make you bigger than you are. The things that give you a vision. The things that give you a challenge.

“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 book Hawaii

statement by Abraham Hewlett, in chapter "From the Farm of Bitterness"
Hawaii (1959)

“Scientists dream about doing great things. Engineers do them.”

James A. Michener book Space

Ch. 6 http://books.google.com/books?id=V1UQXxsQTskC&q=%22Scientists+dream+about+doing+great+things+Engineers+do+them%22&pg=PA378#v=onepage <br class="br">Space (1982)

James A. Michener Quotes about people

“A nation becomes what its young people read in their youth. Its ideals are fashioned then, its goals strongly determined.”

James A. Michener

“I feel myself the inheritor of a great background of people. Just who, precisely, they were, I have never known. I might be part Negro, might be part Jew, part Muslim, part Irish. So I can't afford to be supercilious about any group of people because I may be that people.”

James A. Michener

CNN obituary (17 October 1997) http://www.cnn.com/US/9710/16/michener.obit/

“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

As quoted in "The Michener Phenomenon" by Caryn James in The New York Times (8 September 1985)

“Not too many people work in a job where, waiting out there are three or four hundred people who are paid to tear apart what you've done. And often they are brighter than you are, or they know more about the subject than you do, or they wish they had written a book themselves, or done a lot better. Or they just don't like it! And you have to live with it. I have been very well treated by the critics in the long haul.”

James A. Michener

Academy of Achievement interview (1991)

“[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.”

James A. Michener book Poland

page 591
Poland (1983)

James A. Michener Quotes about life

“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 book The Drifters

Source: The Drifters

“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 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.”

James A. Michener

Interview, Parade magazine (24 November 1991)

“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

Academy of Achievement interview (1991)

“Silence, much more powerful than before, much more shot through with the meaning of life and the accumulated wisdom of history.”

James A. Michener book Poland

page 361
Poland (1983)

James A. Michener: Trending quotes

“I was surprised when shortly after New Year's Day of 1983, the Governor of Texas summoned me to his office, because I hadn't been aware that he knew I was in town.”

James A. Michener book Texas

Texas (1985) First lines

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

James A. Michener

“Youth is truth.”

James A. Michener book The Drifters

The Drifters (1971) First lines

James A. Michener Quotes

“I am a humanist because I think humanity can, with constant moral guidance, create reasonably decent societies.”

James A. Michener book The World Is My Home

The World Is My Home (1991)
Context: 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.

“I don't know who my parents were. I know nothing about my inheritance.”

James A. Michener

Academy of Achievement interview (1991)
Context: 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.

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

James A. Michener book Chesapeake

Chesapeake (1978)

“We are never prepared for what we expect.”

James A. Michener Caravans

Source: Caravans

“I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent rewriter.”

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

“Writers turn dreams into print.”

James A. Michener