Quotes from James A. Michener

the history of a daughter is a drama in three acts. One: from age three to nineteen you will kill any man who touches her. Two: from age twenty to twenty-five you hope that one at least of the young men nosing around will prove satisfactory. Three: from age twenty-six on you pray that any man at all, even a train robber, will take her off your hands. Marjorie is twenty-three and my husband no longer dreams of a perfect husband. Just an acceptable one.

Smiling amiably, the San Angelo man said: "If you do have to explain it, why not use the old joke? Man asked a rancher in the Fort Stockton area: 'Caleb, your six boys are all good Democrats, I hope?' and Caleb said: 'Yep, all but Elmer. He learned to read.

Why is it, Reverend Hale, that we must always laugh at our book, but always revere yours?

The chance emergence of the was nothing. Remember this. But its persistence and patient accumulation of stature were everything. Only by relentless effort did it establish its right to exist.

For of this world one never sees enough and to dine in harmony with nature is one of the gentlest and loveliest things we can do.

Simple. Judaism had its day, and if the Jews had been smart, when Christianity came along they'd have joined up. Christianity has had its day, and if you were intelligent you'd both join the newest religion. Islam!" He bowed low and said, "Soon all Africa will be Islamic. And all Black America. I see India giving up Hinduism while Burma and Thailand surrender Buddhism. Gentlemen, I represent the religion of the future. I offer you salvation.

The great writers, Conrad, Maugham and Melville, spent only a few years in the South Seas, but their memory of those waters was indestructible; for the nature of life in the islands commands attention to the vivid world and its even more vivid inhabitants.

MOST NATIONS HAVE AT ONE TIME OR OTHER BOTH condoned and practiced slavery. Greece and Rome founded their societies on it. India and Japan handled this state of affairs by creating untouchable classes which continue to this day. Arabia clung to formal slavery longer than most, while black countries like Ethiopia and Burundi were notorious. In the New World each colonial power devised a system precisely suited to its peculiar needs and in conformance with its national customs. The

The movement of animals across the bridge was by no means always in one direction, for although it is true that the more spectacular beasts—mastodon, saber-tooth, rhinoceros—came out of Asia to enrich the new world, other animals like the camel originated in America and carried their wonderful capacities into Asia.

this phrase was meaningless, for no matter where the Jew wandered, if he took with him the Talmud he was

Why were these people seeking a new home coming to Israel and not to America? Where had the American dream faltered? And he saw that Israel was right; it was taking people—any people—as America had once done; so that in fifty years the bright new ideas of the world would come probably from Israel and no longer from a tired America.

wherever a human being goes, there is a challenge. Be the best man you can, and your gods will look with favor upon you.

The Rockies are therefore very young and should never be thought of as ancient. They are still in the process of building and eroding, and no one today can calculate what they will look like ten million years from now. They have the extravagant beauty of youth, the allure of adolescence, and they are mountains to be loved.

Human affairs are not so happily arranged that the best things please the most men. It is the proof of a bad cause when it is applauded by the mob.

Therefore, men of Polynesia and Boston and China and Mount Fuji and the barrios of the Philippines, do not come to these islands empty-handed, or craven in spirit, or afraid to starve. There is no food here. In these islands there is no certainty. Bring your own food, your own gods, your own flowers and fruits and concepts. For if you come without resources to these islands you will perish... On these harsh terms the islands waited.

At last he found the branching stream that flowed down from Blue Valley, and now he was guided by the little stone beaver that climbed the cliff.

In later years, it would become fashionable to say of the missionaries, They came to the islands to do good, and they did right well. Others made jest of the missionary slogan, They came to a nation in darkness; they left it in light, by pointing out: Of course they left Hawaii lighter. They stole every goddamned thing that wasn't nailed down.

I live for the few minutes I can talk with a sensible human being, but every time I do, I feel worse than before.

Only a mind steeped in true love can write irony. The others write satire.

no man leaves where he is and seeks a distant place unless he is in some respect a failure; but having failed in one location and having been ejected, it is possible that in the next he will be a little wiser.

In peace sons bury their fathers; in war fathers bury their sons.

I)f you did not read when you were young, you might never catch the disease and then what would be the use of living?

He wondered how men could live till they were seventy if they endured such passions as he had known that fifteenth summer, and although he knew many things...he did not even guess that men are able to live because slowly, one by one, they snuff out the fires of spring until only embers burn in white dignity, in loneliness, and often in cold despair.

Alaska did not produce supermen, but in its formative periods it was served by men of character and determination, and it is a fortunate land which knows such public servants.