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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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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
Novel
Stretch
Called
Objective
Literature
Novels
History
Uncertainty
Another
Objectives
Charitably
Might
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Alternating
World
Standards
Persisted
Writer
Reporting
More quotes by 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
The dead are dead but they rely on us to fulfill their hopes.
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 arrogance of the artist is a very profound thing, and it fortifies you.
James A. Michener
Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries.
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
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
You write that first draft really to see how it's going to come out.
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
If your book doesn't keep you up nights when you are writing it, it won't keep anyone up nights reading it.
James A. Michener
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
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
I wondered how a man ever got an English girl into bed. What did they do with her hockey stick?
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
Writers turn dreams into print.
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
America is a nation with many flaws, but hopes so vast that only the cowardly would refuse to acknowledge them.
James A. Michener
The chief character in this narrative is the Caribbean Sea, one of the world's most alluring bodies of water, a rare gem among the oceans, defined by the islands that form a chain of lovely jewels to the north and east
James A. Michener
When this is over, I'm not going to be the same guy. I am going to live as if I were a great man.
James A. Michener
It is difficult to be king when the gods are changing.
James A. Michener
