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
Topics: Fortune, Luck
I’m not a very good writer, but I’m an excellent rewriter.
—James A. Michener
Topics: Writing
Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries.
—James A. Michener
Topics: Character
All I can do is play the game the way the cards fall.
—James A. Michener
If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay home.
—James A. Michener
Topics: Travel
When this is over, I’m not going to be the same guy. I’m going to live as if I were a great man.
—James A. Michener
Although most of us know Vincent van Gogh in Arles and Paul Gauguin in Tahiti as if they were neighbors—somewhat disreputable but endlessly fascinating—none of us can name two French generals or department store owners of that period. I take enormous pride in considering myself an artist, one of the necessaries.
—James A. Michener
Topics: Writing, Authors & Writing, Writers
I was brought up in the great tradition of the late nineteenth century: that a writer never complains, never explains and never disdains.
—James A. Michener
Topics: Authors & Writing, Writing, Writers
I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions.
—James A. Michener
Topics: Writing
An age is called “dark,” not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it.
—James A. Michener
Topics: Knowledge, Light
It takes courage to know when you ought to be afraid.
—James A. Michener
Topics: Courage
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.
—James A. Michener
Topics: Humanity
The arrogance of the artist is a very profound thing, and it fortifies you.
—James A. Michener
I am always interested in why young people become writers, and from talking with many I have concluded that most do not want to be writers working eight and ten hours a day and accomplishing little; they want to have been writers, garnering the rewards of having completed a best-seller. They aspire to the rewards of writing but not to the travail.
—James A. Michener
Topics: Authors & Writing, Writers, Writing
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
Topics: Realism, Dreams
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
Topics: Dignity, Self-Discovery
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- John D. MacDonald American Novelist
- Pearl S. Buck American Novelist
- Philip Roth American Novelist, Short-story Writer
- Saul Bellow Canadian-born American Novelist
- Bernard Malamud American Novelist
- William Faulkner American Novelist
- Harper Lee American Novelist
- Gore Vidal American Novelist
- John Steinbeck American Novelist
- Louisa May Alcott American Novelist
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