All I can do is play the game the way the cards fall.

— James A. Michener

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

— James A. Michener

A soldier always lives for the next battle, because he knows that before it arrives impossible changes can occur in his favor.

— James A. Michener

At times, working in big cities far from nature, I have been sick with egomania, and I think the reason is this: On the islands one has both the time and the inclination to communicate with the stars and the trees and the waves drifting ashore, one lives more intensely.

— James A. Michener

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.

— James A. Michener

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. Furthermore, they don't want to go through the work of getting the damn book out. There is a huge difference.

— James A. Michener

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

— James A. Michener

For of this world one never sees enough and to dine in harmony with nature is one of the gentlest and loveliest things we can do.

— James A. Michener

I am a humanist because I think humanity can, with constant moral guidance, create reasonably decent societies. I think that young people who want to understand the world can profit from the works of Plato and Socrates, the behavior of the three Thomas, Aquinas, More and Jefferson — the austere analyses of Immanuel Kant and the political leadership of Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. [The World Is My Home (1991)]

— James A. Michener

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)]

— James A. Michener