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

James A. Michener

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James A. Michener
Age: 90 †
Born: 1907
Born: February 3
Died: 1997
Died: October 16
Author
Autobiographer
Military Officer
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
New York City
New York
James Albert Michener
James Michener
Courage
Ought
Takes
Army
Afraid

More quotes by James A. Michener

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Animals form an inalienable fragment of nature, and if we hasten the disappearance of even one species, we diminish our world and our place in it.
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The extreme geniality of San Francisco's economic, intellectual and political climate makes it the most varied and challenging city in the United States.
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The permanent temptation of life is to confuse dreams with reality. The permanent defeat of life comes when dreams are surrendered to reality.
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A writer can make a fortune in America, but he can't make a living.
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The sense of belonging is one of the great gifts men get in battle.
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You write that first draft really to see how it's going to come out.
James A. Michener
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No man leaves where he is and seeks a distant place unless he is in some respect a failure.
James A. Michener
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I think young people ought to seek that differential experience that is going to knock them off dead center. I was a typical American school boy. I happened to get straight A's and be pretty good in sports. But I had no great vision of what I could be. And I never had any yearning.
James A. Michener
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Rampaging horsemen can conquer only the city can civilize.
James A. Michener
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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.
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The job of a storyteller is to tell stories, and I have concentrated on that obligation.
James A. Michener
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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 to the north and east
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In a small Polish farm community, during the fall planting season of 1981, events occurred which electrified the world, sending reverberations of magnitude to capitals as diverse as Washington, Peking and especially Moscow.
James A. Michener
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Things are going to go wrong, and I think we are false to life if we don’t portray it. But there is also the hope that some lucky clown is going to come along and stumble into the gold mine. And I think you are also entitled to hold out that hope.
James A. Michener
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As a writer I have persisted in my uncertainty, alternating between novels which could charitably be considered literature and world reporting which by another stretch of objective standards might be called history.
James A. Michener
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It is difficult to be king when the gods are changing.
James A. Michener
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In six pages, I can't even say Hello.
James A. Michener
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America is a nation with many flaws, but hopes so vast that only the cowardly would refuse to acknowledge them.
James A. Michener
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A poet sees things in two ways: First, as a child who never saw it before, and Second, as a dying man who will never see it again.
James A. Michener
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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