The voices / 35 fragments

James A. Michener

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Archive entries

01Undated

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

James A. Michener / quote

02Undated

We seek God so earnestly, Eliav reflected, not to find Him but to discover ourselves.

James A. Michener / quote

03Undated

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

James A. Michener / quote

04Undated

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.

James A. Michener / quote

05Undated

Over a hundred German scientists arrived here [Huntsville] at eleven o’clock on an April morning and by nightfall more than sixty had applied for cards at the free library.

James A. Michener / quote

06Undated

I wondered how a man ever got an English girl into bed. What did they do with her hockey stick?

James A. Michener / quote

07Undated

I am a humanist because I think humanity can, with constant moral guidance, create reasonably decent societies. I think that young people who want to understand the world can profit from the works of Plato and Socrates, the behaviour of the three Thomases, Aquinas, More and Jefferson — the austere analyses of Immanuel Kant and the political leadership of Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. [The World Is My Home (1991)]

James A. Michener / quote

08Undated

It took her three seconds-one, two, three-to know that her destiny required her to join this man, and his gun and his wagon, and his waiting horses. She had no conception of what was being asked of her, but she knew that there could be no viable alternative. She dashed inside the orphanage and grabbed the few things that belonged to her.

James A. Michener / quote

09Undated

For of this world one never sees enough and to dine in harmony with nature is one of the gentlest and loveliest things we can do.

James A. Michener / quote

10Undated

To travel across Spain and finally to reach Barcelona is like drinking a respectable red wine and finishing up with a bottle of champagne.

James A. Michener / quote

11Undated

The South Pacific is memorable because when you are in the islands you simply cannot ignore nature. You cannot avoid looking up at the stars, large as apples on a new tree. You cannot deafen your ear to the thunder of the surf. The bright sands, the screaming birds, and the wild winds are always with you.

James A. Michener / quote

12Undated

At times, working in big cities far from nature, I have been sick with nesomania, and I think the reason is this: On the islands one has both the time and the inclination to communicate with the stars and the trees and the waves drifting ashore, one lives more intensely.

James A. Michener / quote

13Undated

The South Pacific is not a paradise, in the sense that Eden wasn't either. There are always apples and snakes. But it is a wonderful place to live. The green vales of Tahiti, the hills of Guadalcanal, the towering peaks about Wau, and the noonday brilliance of Rabaul have enchanted many white travelers who have stayed on for many years and built happy lives. Often on a cool night when the beer was plentiful and the stories alluring, we have envied the men and women of the South Pacific

James A. Michener / quote

14Undated

What did I learn in my travels? In whatever foreign country I visited I met dreamers who longed to reach America and its promise of an enriched life so I knew we had a country rich in opportunity, but I also met those brilliant Jews already in America who had been denied that promise.

James A. Michener / quote

15Undated

With my pen I have engraved warrants of citizenship in the most remote corners, for truly the world has been my home.

James A. Michener / quote

16Undated

Being goal-oriented instead of self-oriented is crucial. I know so many people who want to be writers. But let me tell you, they really don't want to be writers. They want to have been writers. They wish they had a book in print. They don't want to go through the work of getting the damn book out. There is a huge difference.

James A. Michener / quote

17Undated

No man leaves where he is and seeks a distant place unless he is in some respect a failure.

James A. Michener / quote

18Undated

Writers turn dreams into print.

James A. Michener / quote

19Undated

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

James A. Michener / quote

20Undated

Other things being roughly equal, that man lives most keenly who lives in closest harmony with nature. To be wholly alive a man must know storms, he must feel the ocean as his home or the air as his habitation. He must smell the things of earth, hear the sounds of living things and taste the rich abundance of the soil and sea.

James A. Michener / quote

21Undated

It may seem contradictory, but in the languid tropics one spends more time contemplating those great good things of sound and sight and smell.

James A. Michener / quote

22Undated

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 food here. In these islands there is no certainty. Bring your own food, your own gods, your own flowers and fruits and concepts. For if you come without resources to these islands you will perish... On these harsh terms the islands waited.

James A. Michener / quote

23Undated

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. [The World Is My Home (1991)]

James A. Michener / quote

24Undated

Only the rocks live forever, Gray Wolf said.

James A. Michener / quote