James A. Michener citations

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

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

“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."”

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

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

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

“We are never prepared for what we expect.”

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

“If your book doesn't keep you up nights when you are writing it, it won't keep anyone up nights reading it.”

“Writers turn dreams into print.”

“The permanent temptation of life is to confuse dreams with reality. The permanent defeat of life comes when dreams are surrendered to reality.”

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

“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.”