James A. Michener Quotes

Quotes about:

• 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 A. Michener

  Love, Inspirational, Inspiring

  66 Copy quote

• Don't put off for tomorrow what you can do today because if you enjoy it today, you can do it again tomorrow.

  James A. Michener

  Procrastination, Opportunity, Today

  James A. Michener (2014). “The Drifters: A Novel”, p.528, Dial Press

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

  James A. Michener

  Inspirational, Motivational, Success

  James A. Michener (2007). “Chesapeake”, p.278, Ballantine Books

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

  James A. Michener

  War, Failure, Ignorance

  James A. Michener “SPACE”

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• I think young people ought to seek the experience that is going to knock them off center.

  James A. Michener

  Thinking, People, Young

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

  James A. Michener

  Inspirational, Funny, Travel

  "Good Advice". Book by William Safire and Leonard Safir, 1982.

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• I write at eighty-five for the same reasons that impelled me to write at forty-five; I was born with a passionate desire to communicate, to organize experience, to tell tales that dramatize the adventures which readers might have had. I have been that ancient man who sat by the campfire at night and regaled the hunters with imaginative recitations about their prowess. The job of an apple tree is to bear apples. The job of a storyteller is to tell stories, and I have concentrated on that obligation.

  James A. Michener

  Jobs, Writing, Adventure

  James A. Michener (2014). “The World Is My Home: A Memoir”, p.17, Dial Press

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• I was born to a woman I never knew and raised by another who took in orphans. I do not know my background, my lineage, my biological or cultural heritage. But when I meet someone new, I treat them with respect.... For after all, they could be my people.

  James A. Michener

  People, Adoption, Heritage

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• There are no insoluble problems. Only time-consuming ones.

  James A. Michener

  Problem, Consuming, Time Consuming

  James A. Michener (2014). “Space: A Novel”, p.258, Dial Press

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• A poet sees things in two ways: First, as a child who never saw it before, and Second, as a dying man who will never see it again.

  James A. Michener

  Children, Men, Two

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• 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

  Book, Reading, Writing

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

  James A. Michener

  Writing, Crafts, Excellent

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• We are never prepared for what we expect.

  James A. Michener

  Preparation, Hmmm, Prepared

  James A. Michener (2014). “Caravans: A Novel of Afghanistan”, p.61, Dial Press

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• Scientists dream about doing great things. Engineers do them.

  James A. Michener

  Dream, Science, Technology

  James A. Michener (2014). “Space: A Novel”, p.537, Dial Press

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• If a man happens to find himself, he has a mansion which he can inhabit with dignity all the days of his life.

  James A. Michener

  Self Esteem, Men, Discovery

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

  James A. Michener

  Writing, Pages, Six

  Ernest Hemingway, James A. Michener (1986). “The dangerous summer”, Scribner Book Company

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• Creative geniuses are a slap-happy lot. Treat Them with respect.

  James A. Michener

  Creativity, Science, Creative

  James A. Michener (2014). “The Novel”, p.65, Dial Press

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• 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

  Life, Dream, Reality

  James A. Michener (2014). “The Drifters: A Novel”, p.59, Dial Press

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

  James A. Michener

  People, Goal, Determined

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• The dead are dead but they rely on us to fulfill their hopes.

  James A. Michener

  Rely

  James A. Michener (2013). “The Source: A Novel”, p.1276, Dial Press

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• 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.

  James A. Michener

  Work, Thinking, Years

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• I would suppose I learned how to write when I was very young indeed. When I read a child's book about the Trojan War and decided that the Greeks were really a bunch of frauds with their tricky horses and the terrible things they did, stealing one another's wives, and so on, so at that very early age, I re-wrote the ending of the Iliad so that the Trojans won. And boy, Achilles and Ajax got what they wanted, believe me. And thereafter, at frequent intervals, I would write something. It was really quite extraordinary. Never of very high merit, but the daringness of it was.

  James A. Michener

  Horse, Children, War

  "Storytelling Phenomenon". The Academy of Achievement interview, www.achievement.org. January 10, 1991.

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• 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.

  James A. Michener

  Animal, Our World, Form

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• 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.

  James A. Michener

  Character, Thinking, People

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• For this is the journey that men and women make, to find themselves. If they fail in this, it doesn't matter much else what they find.

  James A. Michener

  Journey, Men, Matter

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