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The dead are dead but they rely on us to fulfill their hopes.

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
Fulfill
Hopes
Rely
Dead

More quotes by James A. Michener

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All I can do is play the game the way the cards fall.
James A. Michener
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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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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.
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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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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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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If I were a young man, I would not hesitate at writing anything to get into print, except pornography.
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 am terrified of restrictive religious doctrine, having learned from history that when men who adhere to any form of it are in control, common men like me are in peril.
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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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
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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 takes courage to know when you ought to be afraid.
James A. Michener
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In six pages, I can't even say Hello.
James A. Michener
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Every animal that walks the earth, or swims, or flies is precious beyond description, something so rare and wonderful that it equals the stars or the ocean or the mind of man.
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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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 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