Quotes from James A. Michener

My principal flowers will be trees. Because when you plant trees, you're entitled to believe you'll live forever. So

In September my chances diminished, because my home district happened to include a strong concentration of Wallace supporters and it seemed possible that Wallace and not Humphrey would wind up in second place, a fear that was enhanced when the straw vote in our local high school showed Nixon winning but with Wallace pressing him in second position. Humphrey finished so far behind that students who had voted for him were conspicuous and were noted unfavorably by their companions.

Certain Americans in western states, having lost their Indians and with few blacks at hand, naturally turned to hating Mexicans

Hers was the heart-hunger that has sent people of all ages in search of new thoughts and deeper perceptions.

A minority with machine guns can always protect itself.

The count says we're Austrians now. But the countess tells me on the sly: 'You're Polish and always will be.' I asked her if she was Polish too, and she said: 'Forever.' " Tytus led his son to a window, and as if to lend emphasis to what he was about to say, pointed toward the river: "As long as the Vistula flows, it waters the soul of Poland.

Where is Winesooth?" she had asked Wiktor, and he had said rather sharply: "On the map, where else?" "But where on the map? Clearly, it's not on mine." "It's got to be," he snapped, grabbing the map from her, then jabbing at it with his finger. "Right there, where it should be." "But that says Lancut," she protested, and when Wiktor looked again at the map he repeated: "It's right here, where I said.

those men and women who were openly committed to some worthy goal achieved more than those who were reluctant to associate themselves with anything.

But where you point…it's Lancut." For a long, perplexed moment Wiktor had looked at the map, then at his intended bride, and it was as if someone had lit a light in his face. "Darling, this is Winesooth." "Are you teasing me?" "No!" he said emphatically, pointing to the letters Lancut. "That's Winesooth. That's how we pronounce it." "Oh, Wiktor!

between Old Testament and New. The Christian discovers the spirit of God, and the reality is so blinding that you go right out, build a cathedral and kill a million people. The Jew avoids this intimacy and lives year after year in his ghetto, in a grubby little synagogue, working out the principles whereby men can live together.

his lost princess and his queen; but when this

We are mankind because we survive. We do it in a half-assed way, but we do it.

The secret, Kenny, is that people are lonely. They want friends. They want to talk with their neighbors, and laugh and cut up. But by themselves they simply cannot do it. Believe me, Kenny, you could have the Louvre Museum, that's in Paris, right over here and they'd never go see it unless I led them, and joked with them, and told them how much fun it's going to be, something they'll never forget.' "I

the burden of the thinking man is to calculate the probable good against the possible bad and to decide whether the change will be worth the risk.

It really set my nerves jangling," Jenny Larsen confessed. "Wasn't it strange, the way it kept up, day after day?" Alice Grebe, to whom this question was directed, said nothing, for

Religions are always in trouble," Tabari said. "In adversity they grow honest. It's good for them.

The sanest judgment that can be passed on the genesis of this terrible war between two groups of friends is that it was the result of imperiousness on the English side and intransigence on the Boer. Like

The first word implied a philosophical system, the second a social order, and the third an attitude toward technology; and he concluded that in each category his reader must grasp three fundamental developments.

then it occurred to him that a worthy man dedicates himself not to one particular thing which attracts him, but to all tasks; and he

There was an evil in the world which God was powerless to combat without the help of men; a mystical partnership was being offered, stunning in concept and in its power to elicit the best in life.

Most important fact of war? Keep your army in existence. Lose the battle, but keep your eye on winning the war." But

But that night I went to bed more convinced than ever that this dangerous College, this time bomb lodged near the heart of the nation, must be abolished.

I have no hope that the white man can ever say something and mean it, because we never deal with the same white man. One makes the treaty, and he goes. Another comes, but he never heard of the treaty. With us it is different. When the calumet passes, every Arapaho now and to be born is bound.

dinner celebrating the patron saint of