Quotes by James Michener

• There are no insoluble problems. Only time-consuming ones.
• If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay at home.
• The really great writers are people like Emily Bronte who sit in a room and write out of their limited experience and unlimited imagination.
• The permanent temptation of life is to confuse dreams with reality. The permanent defeat of life comes when dreams are surrendered to reality.
• The arrogance of the artist is a very profound thing, and it fortifies you.
• Scientists dream about doing great things. Engineers do them.
• 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 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.
• 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.
• I was brought up in the great tradition of the late nineteenth century: that a writer never complains, never explains and never disdains.
• I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions.
• 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.
• An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it.
• If a man happens to find himself, he has a mansion which he can inhabit with dignity all the days of his life.
• I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent rewriter.
• Don't put off until tomorrow what you can do today, because if you enjoy it today, you can do it again tomorrow.