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[The church's] job is to provide permanent solace and spiritual leadership to the people as a whole, whatever their government at the moment, so long as it stays within the bounds of moral decency.

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
Long
Church
Decency
People
Whatever
Stays
Moment
Bounds
Spiritual
Permanent
Jobs
Provide
Moments
Leadership
Government
Within
Whole
Moral
Solace

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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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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A writer can make a fortune in America, but he can't make a living.
James A. Michener
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I wondered how a man ever got an English girl into bed. What did they do with her hockey stick?
James A. Michener
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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.
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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For this is the journey that men and women make, to find themselves. If they fail in this, it doesn't matter much else what they find.
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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In six pages, I can't even say Hello.
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
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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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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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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.
James A. Michener
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Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries.
James A. Michener
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I have never thought of myself as a good writer. Anyone who wants reassurance of that should read one of my first drafts. But I'm one of the world's great rewriters.
James A. Michener
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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
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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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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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I think the bottom line is that if you get through a childhood like mine, it's not at all bad. Obviously, you come out a pretty tough turkey, and you have had all the inoculations you need to keep you on a level keel for the rest of your life. The sad part is, most of us don't come out.
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