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

Ideas! Ideas! They are the fuel that keeps a brain functioning at a high level, and fortunately one does not have to invent one’s own; choice ideas from the past are easily available in any good library or university or on the job, if one looks. Ideas have been the joy of my life and in my ninth decade I am still striving to understand those that lie beyond my grasp while finding great comfort in those I do understand.” — Chapter VII, “Ideas”, page 259

Never be ashamed of anything! If you've made a fool of yourself, just don't do it again. But being ashamed is only being a fool twice for the same reason.

I feel myself the inheritor of a great background of people. Just who, precisely, they were, I have never known. I might be part Negro, might be part Jew, part Muslim, part Irish. So I can't afford to be supercilious about any group of people because I may be that people.