Quotes from James A. Michener

A BASIC TENET OF QUAKERISM WAS THAT IF A MAN or woman tended the divine fire that burned within each human breast, one could establish direct relationship to God without the intercession of priest or rabbi. Songs and shouted prayers were not necessary to attract God's attention, for He dwelt within and could be summoned by a whisper. Nevertheless

People and places know greatness for a while, then decline.

revealed. There would be a brief hello

Over a hundred German scientists arrived here [Huntsville] at eleven o'clock on an April morning and by nightfall more than sixty had applied for cards at the free library.

explained: "It happened, but only in the mind of the writer. And, of course, in your mind, too. That's what a novel is. The exchange of dreams.

her fellow passengers: "My

But thinking is something different, altogether! Think always as if the hot hand of hell were grabbing for you. Think to the limit of your mind. Imagine, dream, hope, want things, drive yourself to goodness. Whatever you do...do it to the absolute best of your ability. Never take the easy way where thinking is concerned.

But in spring, of course, any place is beautiful, because in spring fires leap from your heart, and you can see things that aren't there.

We all hurt other people, especially those we love...civilized people were the ones who had learned to hurt according to rules.

the oppressive government of the rich.

honor included not only physical and moral courage but also a daring commitment to central beliefs

Jan had never seen a really sumptuous establishment like Lancut, but he had worked often at Castle Gorka and could see the vast difference between how a count lived, with his fifty horses and forty servants, and how his peasants lived, with meat once a year, a new suit of clothes once every ten years, little medicine and less education.

I am sure old men forget what it was to be young and to be wholly in love. Not even I can remember those breathless moments. That's why they give old men important jobs and big salaries and orchestras to lead. To pay us back for the terrible loss we have sustained.

And wherever you go on the face of the earth have the humility to think that a thousand years ago someone pretty much like you stood there and a thousand years from now a boy like you will be there. And in two thousand years boys and places and people will have been pretty much the same.

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. [The World Is My Home (1991)]

She has disaffiliated herself from the beliefs that gave our society its structure in the past, but she has found no new structure upon which she can rely for that support which every human life requires.

The traveler wishing to observe Islamic Spain has his choice of two cities, Granada with its Alhambra or Córdoba with its Great Mosque (in Spanish Mezquita). Of the two former is be a considerable degree the more exciting and also the easier to absorb for its buildings, gardens and geographic settings are immediately recognizable as significant. It would take a dull man to miss the point of Granada, for its Alhambra is a museum of Islamic memories.

Women like her looked at their world, rolled up their sleeves, and tried to make it better. Now

He was reminded that men may be angels, but they are animals, too. They are driven by uncontrollable forces and only the love of other people makes it possible for them to survive. Men are lonely and are stricken in the night. They lock their jaws against themselves. They scream like animals, and even though they ridicule love and the forces of destruction, they are themselves theatres for the operation of such forces.

So the present enmity between the nations of this area has got to be considered a temporary interruption of an historic process, and I have found that where temporary interruptions go against the grain of history they do not long endure.

Because I am for them, Commander, because their ancestors stood up to that Nazi, Bligh, just like I would be for one little Jew, terrified and hungry, crossing the Pyrenees to get away to freedom from the Gestapo. One little Jew. You wouldn't have him in your house. He stinks, he has lice. But, you know what, Commander? I am for him, every time." And he would punch me in the shoulder and lug his M-1 up onto the ridge, night after night.

There will never be rebellion here. In Richmond and Williamsburg there has been talk. Jefferson isn't reliable and Patrick Henry is a born troublemaker of no substance whatever. No, sir, Virginia stands fast with the king.

And he showed them, riding on the Thames at the foot of the dock, a small double-ended, single-masted open shallop twenty-three feet long with eight ominous oars. "You, Edmund Steed, jump in," Smith commanded, and a fair young man of twenty-five, dressed in the clothes of a scholar, obeyed. Soon all seven were aboard manning their oars while Captain Smith, barely five feet tall, stood approvingly on the dock, watching the little craft adjust to the weight

STEED: But in a presidential crisis I expect him to be presidential.