"I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions."
— James A. Michener

"I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent rewriter."
— James A. Michener

"If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the relgion and avoid the people, you might better stay home."
— James A. Michener

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

"For this is the journey that men make, to find themselves. If they fail in this, it doesn't matter much what else they find."
— James A. Michener

"An age is called Dark, not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it."
— James A. Michener

"Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries."
— James A. Michener

"Writers turn dreams into print."
— James A. Michener (James A. Michener's Writer's Handbook: Explorations in Writing and Publishing)

"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

"I can no longer take war or promotion or big income or a large house seriously. I reject empire and Vietnam and placing a man on the moon. I deny time payments and looking like the girl next door and church weddings and a great deal more. If you want to blame such rejection on grass, you can do so. I charge it to awakening."
— James A. Michener (The Drifters)

"This is not a promise, this is not threat, it's just the way it's gonna be!!!"
— James A. Michener (The Covenant)

"Scientists dream about doing great things. Engineers do them."
— James A. Michener

"I love writing.  I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions."
— James A. Michener

"In these centuries when God,...was forging a Christian church so that it might fulfill the longing of a hungry world, He was at the same time perfecting His first religion, Judaism, so that it might stand as the permanent norm against which to judge all others. Whenever, in the future some new religion strayed too far from the basic precepts of Judaism, God could be assured that it was in error; so in the Galilee, His ancient cauldron of faith, he spent as much time upon the old Jews as He did upon the new Christians."
— James A. Michener (The Source: A Novel)

"a soldier lives always for the next battle, because he knows that before it arrives impossible changes can occur in his favor."
— James A. Michener (Poland)

"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

"Unless you think you can do better than Tolstoy, we don’t need you."
— James A. Michener

"I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with
human emotions."
— James A. Michener