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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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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
Storyteller
Obligation
Jobs
Tell
Stories
Writing
Concentrated

More quotes by James A. Michener

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The sense of belonging is one of the great gifts men get in battle.
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There are no insoluble problems. Only time-consuming ones.
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I wondered how a man ever got an English girl into bed. What did they do with her hockey stick?
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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
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I had been educated with free scholarships. I went to nine different universities, always at public expense, and when you have that experience, you are almost obligated to give it back. It's as simple as that.
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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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I've spent my life trying to be better than I was, and I am a brother to all who share the same aspiration.
James A. Michener
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If I were a young man, I would not hesitate at writing anything to get into print, except pornography.
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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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I think the crucial thing in the writing career is to find what you want to do and how you fit in. What somebody else does is of no concern whatever except as an interesting variation.
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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An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it.
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.
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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.
James A. Michener
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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.
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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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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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I don’t know who my parents were. I know nothing about my inheritance. I could be Jewish I could be part Negro I could be Irish I could be Russian. I am spiritually a mix anyway, but I did have a solid childhood fortunately, because of some wonderful women who brought me up. I never had a father or a man in the house, and that was a loss...
James A. Michener
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You don't fight to protect warships or old men. Like the book says, you fight to save your civilization. And so often it seems that civilization is composed mainly of the things women and children want.
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.
James A. Michener