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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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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
Fortune
Writer
Living
America
Make
More quotes by James A. Michener
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
The dead are dead but they rely on us to fulfill their hopes.
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 wondered how a man ever got an English girl into bed. What did they do with her hockey stick?
James A. Michener
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
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 nation becomes what its young people read in their youth. Its ideals are fashioned then, its goals strongly determined.
James A. Michener
The extreme geniality of San Francisco's economic, intellectual and political climate makes it the most varied and challenging city in the United States.
James A. Michener
You write that first draft really to see how it's going to come out.
James A. Michener
The job of a storyteller is to tell stories, and I have concentrated on that obligation.
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
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
It takes courage to know when you ought to be afraid.
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
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
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
America is a nation with many flaws, but hopes so vast that only the cowardly would refuse to acknowledge them.
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
Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries.
James A. Michener
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
