James A. Michener Quotes

He thought of this statement a long time and wondered why people so attached to God should take such positive delight in crucifying a man who had precisely the same love for God, but with a different manner of expressing it.

The Boer nation had become a theocracy, and would so remain.

The constable said, “Just time enough for the scars to heal, so that I can whip them open again.” He thought of this statement a long time and wondered why people so attached to God should take such positive delight in crucifying a man who had precisely the same love for God, but with a different manner of expressing it. He even understood the punishment, for he had observed that all people allied to a church seek to protect it, but he would never understand the pleasure the Puritans took in the infliction of punishment.

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.

Cohens are priests. Levis are temple attendants. Israels are the common

I have no hope that the white man can ever say something and mean it, because we never deal with the same white man. One makes the treaty, and he goes. Another comes, but he never heard of the treaty. With us it is different. When the calumet passes, every Arapaho now and to be born is bound.

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

And in this way the Ukrainian cossack Trofim Zhdanko acquired a ship he wanted, a wife he admired and a son he abhorred.

said, “The paths to God are manifold.

Where is Winesooth?” she had asked Wiktor, and he had said rather sharply: “On the map, where else?” “But where on the map? Clearly, it’s not on mine.” “It’s got to be,” he snapped, grabbing the map from her, then jabbing at it with his finger. “Right there, where it should be.” “But that says Lancut,” she protested, and when Wiktor looked again at the map he repeated: “It’s right here, where I said.

rarely did the soaring words of this Book resound with more meaning than there in the long hut beside the Arctic Ocean as the sailors read the familiar verses they had learned as boys in distant New England.

he could look at the evidence planted in the universe and from it derive a new concept, and a greater thing than this no mind can accomplish

About this time the custom arose of referring to the Eastern Shore with capital letters, as if it were a special place; this tribute was never paid the western shore.

Timelessly, relentlessly, in storm and hunger and hurricane the island was given life, and this life was sustained only by constant new volcanic eruptions that spewed forth new lava that could be broken down into life-sustaining soil. In violence the island lived, and in violence a great beauty was born.

When you seek, you find things you did not anticipate.