Quotes from James A. Michener

club, where everyone looked to be over sixty, even those in their thirties, and he showed Bruce how to order dishes that were the mainstay of the menu: beef with Yorkshire pudding and trifle.

they believed that the bright, soaring promises of the New Testament could be used as a basis for government; and

But it was strange—generation after generation these quiet women with their demure bearing and fearless intelligence seemed to make the lasting wives. Their husbands appeared to love them as much at seventy as they had at seventeen: I wonder if there's something to the way they're brought up? Always speaking their minds and taking part in things?

We told Ellen, "He's a

Rabbi Akiba said: Israel must not be like the pagans, thanking their wooden gods when good happens and cursing them when evil comes. When good comes, the Jews thank God, and when evil comes, they thank Him too.

Singapore 92.6; Taiwan 89.7; Korea 83.3; Japan 82.1; West Germany 78.8; France 72.7; United States 70.3; Great Britain 40.4; Poland 33.3; Zaire 29.6; Chad 19.9. I have the others, but that's a sampling.

Any spot for which a man's forebears have bled and died will forever be his homeland.

Remember the story of what your god Yahweh said not far from here? 'Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature. Yahweh seeth not as man seeth, for man looketh on the outward appearance, but Yahweh looketh on the heart.

It was rather that he discovered for himself the inherent undesirability of becoming a leader; it was an act of pomp engaged in by lesser men who enjoyed bedecking themselves in feathers. He would let others use office to proclaim their feats. He would concentrate on the feat itself, doing what had to be done Ã¢â'¬Â¦ in silence.

The world is not pretty. It's only the hard work of some people that makes it so.

said, "The paths to God are manifold.

a nation is totally geared to the waging of war, it had better ensure that war keeps occurring somewhere; and

There is no reason why any sane person should read Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind. It is one of the worst books ever written by an American, shoddy, meretricious and without any redeeming social value.

They were the ships of Task Force 77 and they had been sent to destroy the communist-held bridges at Toko-ri.

We are never prepared for what we expect

Then a look of compassion filled her eyes; to be ignorant of the oyster was amusing, but to be unacquainted with the crab was pathetic.

Damn, you know books and sports on television. You're a triple threat." "Those are the sorts of things that keep you alive when you pass seventy." In mild

Wrong decisions, Jakob, are never inevitable. A wise man can always turn back from a precipice.

I discovered not only Hana-ogi's enormous love but I also discovered her land, the tragic , doomed land of Japan, and from it I learned the fundamental secret of her country: too many people.

the more committed a family becomes to a given project, the more vulnerable it also becomes.

But the new priest in town, this Father Ybarra, who had come north to see if the missions should be closed down, absolutely forbade her to step foot inside Santa Teresa: "This place is not for women. If God had intended you to enter these precincts, he would have made women friars.

When Hiram Cater was seven years old his serious education began, not in spelling or arithmetic but in the brutal tactics of survival in a white world.

western paintings did not occur.

The worst thing a nation can do to itself is to cultivate and maintain a supply of cheap labor. When salaries are kept down, money stops circulating, taxes bring in diminished funds, and everybody loses.