Quotes By James A. Michener

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

I think the crucial thing in the writing career is to find what you want to do and how you fit in. What somebody else does is of no concern whatever except as an interesting variation.

Scientists dream about doing great things. Engineers do them.

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

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

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

I was brought up in the great tradition of the late nineteenth century: that a writer never complains, never explains and never disdains.

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

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

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

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.

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

They were a group of two dozen nurses completely surrounded by 100,000 unattached American men.

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

I was a Navy officer writing about Navy problems and I simply stole this lovely Army nurse and popped her into a Navy uniform, where she has done very well for herself.

The arrogance of the artist is a very profound thing, and it fortifies you.

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

It takes courage to know when you ought to be afraid.