Quotes from James Michener

America is a nation with many flaws, but hopes so vast that only the cowardly would refuse to acknowledge them.

If your book doesn't keep you up nights when you are writing it, it won't keep anyone up nights reading it.

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.

I wondered how a man ever got an English girl into bed. What did they do with her hockey stick?

It is difficult to be king when the gods are changing.

How old are you? Thirty six. Prime of life. Woman's never better. Has some sense to go along with her beauty, and you always were a beauty, Charlotte.

As a boy I was saved from a life of ignorance by my little hometown library. As a college student I was educated in the stacks of the Swarthmore library. And as an adult I use libraries daily in my search for the facts and the enlightenment I use in writing my books. In fact, I like libraries so much that I married a librarian.

I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions

I dragged my gear down to the shore and saw the submariners, the way they stood aloof and silent, watching their pigboat with loving eyes. They are alone in the Navy. I admired the PT boys. And I often wondered how the aviators had the courage to go out day after day and I forgave their boasting. But the submariners! In the entire fleet they stand apart.

The library of the future may very well be twofold: an underground repository for precious old books published prior to 1980 which no one sees or handles, plus a crisp reading disk to which chips from any library in the world are delivered electronically as you dial for them.

The quality of a good life depends in large measure on how a man reacts to his natural environment, and we cannot destroy one without diminishing the other.

What we require is a balance between protest and stability. This is never easy to obtain but is worth attempting, because we know that if through indifference we lose our liberties we shall not regain them in this century.

I love the swing and swirl of words as they tangle with human emotions.

An age is called Dark, not because the light fails to shine but because people refuse to see it.

Tomato peelin' start late this year. Meanwhiles we got to eat.