Quotes by James A. Michener

“Therefore, men of Polynesia and Boston and China and Mount Fuji and the barrios of the Philippines, do not come to these islands empty-handed, or craven in spirit, or afraid to starve. There is no ...”

“Only the rocks live forever, Gray Wolf said.”

“a soldier lives always for the next battle, because he knows that before it arrives impossible changes can occur in his favor.”

“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.”

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

“In 1948 I addressed some students at Washington and Lee University, and in the question-answer period one young man observed with asperity, But it's easy for you to write. You've traveled.”

“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.”

“A group of two dozen nurses completely surrounded by 100,000 unattached American men.”

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

“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...”

“Youth is truth.”

“Only another writer, someone who had worked his heart out on a good book which sold three thousand copies, could appreciate the thrill that overcame me one April morning in 1973 when Dean Rivers of...”

“For some time now they had been suspicious of him.”

“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.”

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

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

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

“About a billion years ago, long before the continents had separated to define the ancient oceans, or their own outlines had been determined, a small protuberance jutted out from the northwest corne...”

“The chief character in this narrative is the Caribbean Sea, one of the world's most alluring bodies of water, a rare gem among the oceans, defined by the islands that form a chain of lovely jewels ...”

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