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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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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
Life
Aspiration
Spent
Brother
Share
Better
Trying
More quotes by James A. Michener
Religious hatreds ought not to be propagated at all, but certainly not on a tax-exempt basis.
James A. Michener
No man leaves where he is and seeks a distant place unless he is in some respect a failure.
James A. Michener
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
If a man happens to find himself, he has a mansion which he can inhabit with dignity all the days of his life.
James A. Michener
The really great writers are people like Emily Brontë who sit in a room and write out of their limited experience and unlimited imagination.
James A. Michener
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
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
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
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
Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries.
James A. Michener
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.
James A. Michener
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
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
All I can do is play the game the way the cards fall.
James A. Michener
[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
You write that first draft really to see how it's going to come out.
James A. Michener
An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it.
James A. Michener
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
The dead are dead but they rely on us to fulfill their hopes.
James A. Michener
In six pages, I can't even say Hello.
James A. Michener
