Quote

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

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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
Always
Talking
Aspire
People
Become
Rewards
Young
Ten
Travail
Littles
Eight
Seller
Best
Writers
Accomplishing
Little
Interested
Concluded
Many
Working
Sellers
Writing
Hours
Completed

More quotes by James A. Michener

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The really great writers are people like Emily Brontë who sit in a room and write out of their limited experience and unlimited imagination.
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If a young aspirant had a modicum of skill and a busy typewriter she or he would sooner or later get a foothold in one of the magazines and a leaping start on the ladder upward.
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America is a nation with many flaws, but hopes so vast that only the cowardly would refuse to acknowledge them.
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An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it.
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Writers turn dreams into print.
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Rampaging horsemen can conquer only the city can civilize.
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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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When this is over, I'm not going to be the same guy. I am going to live as if I were a great man.
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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 corner of what would later become North America.
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Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries.
James A. Michener
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The arrogance of the artist is a very profound thing, and it fortifies you.
James A. Michener
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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
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...when men ignite in their hearts a religious fury, they inflict at the same time a blindness on their eyes.
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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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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The dead are dead but they rely on us to fulfill their hopes.
James A. Michener
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A nation becomes what its young people read in their youth. Its ideals are fashioned then, its goals strongly determined.
James A. Michener
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The decent thing to do is to get rid of some of this money.
James A. Michener
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It takes courage to know when you ought to be afraid.
James A. Michener
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Religious hatreds ought not to be propagated at all, but certainly not on a tax-exempt basis.
James A. Michener