JAMES A. MICHENER

It takes courage to know when you ought to be afraid.

They were a group of two dozen nurses completely surrounded by 100,000 unattached American men.

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

For this is the journey that men and women make, to find themselves. If they fail in this, it doesn't matter much else what they find.

Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries.

If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay at home.

The permanent temptation of life is to confuse dreams with reality. The permanent defeat of life comes when dreams are surrendered to reality.

There are no insoluble problems. Only time-consuming ones.

The arrogance of the artist is a very profound thing, and it fortifies you.

I was a Navy officer writing about Navy problems and I simply stole this lovely Army nurse and popped her into a Navy uniform, where she has done very well for herself.

I think the crucial thing in the writing career is to find what you want to do and how you fit in. What somebody else does is of no concern whatever except as an interesting variation.

Russia, France, Germany and China. They revere their writers. America is still a frontier country that almost shudders at the idea of creative expression.

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

I was brought up in the great tradition of the late nineteenth century: that a writer never complains, never explains and never disdains.

The really great writers are people like Emily Bronte who sit in a room and write out of their limited experience and unlimited imagination.

If a man happens to find himself, he has a mansion which he can inhabit with dignity all the days of his life.

Scientists dream about doing great things. Engineers do them.

I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent rewriter.

We cannot be indifferent to space, because the grand, slow march of intelligence has brought us, in our generation, to a point from which we can explore and understand and utilize it. To turn back now would be to deny our history, our capabilities.

I went to nine different universities and never paid a nickle of my own money. My wife got many scholarships. We are children of the United States.

I am a humanist because I think humanity can, with constant moral guidance, create reasonably decent societies.

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.

Religious hatreds ought not to be propagated at all, but certainly not on a tax-exempt basis.

There is no hope for any nation or group that allows itself to be drawn into the orbit of international communism.

If you type adeptly with 10 fingers, you're typing faster than your mind is working.