James A. Michener: Trending quotes (page 2)

“Second, after a painful gap without any king, and a furious struggle by various foreign powers to elect men favorable to them, the Seym chose a pathetic Polish incompetent, who had the good sense to die rather promptly.”

“On Tuesday the freighter steamed through the Straits of Gibraltar and for five days plowed eastward through the Mediterranean, past islands and peninsulas rich in history, so that on Saturday night the steward advised Dr. Cullinane, "If you wish an early sight of the Holy Land you must be up at dawn."”

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

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

“I had been sent to Mexico to cover a murder, one of a remarkable kind.”

“No invader has ever conquered the heart of Poland, that spirit which is the inheritance of sons and daughters, the private passion of families and the ancient, unbreakable tie to all those who came before.”

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

“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.”

“Millions upon millions of years ago, when the continents were already formed and the principal features of the earth had been decided, there existed, then as now, one aspect of the world that dwarfed all others… a mighty ocean, resting uneasily to the east of the largest continent, a restless ever-changing, gigantic body of water that would later be described as Pacific.”

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

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

“He had obtained a clearer view of his homeland by leaving it and seeing it through the eyes of others.”

“…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.”

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

“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.”

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

“A Pole is a man born with a sword in his right hand, a brick in his left. When the battle is over, he starts to rebuild.”

“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.”

“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.”