“No man leaves where he is and seeks a distant place unless he is in some respect a failure.”
― James A. Michener, quote from Hawaii
“This is the greatest evil that grows out of a wrong act. Somebody always remembers it … in an evil way.”
― James A. Michener, quote from Hawaii
“Why is it, Reverend Hale, that we must always laugh at our book, but always revere yours?”
― James A. Michener, quote from Hawaii
“The chance emergence of the was nothing. Remember this. But its persistence and patient accumulation of stature were everything. Only by relentless effort did it establish its right to exist.”
― James A. Michener, quote from Hawaii
“wherever a human being goes, there is a challenge. Be the best man you can, and your gods will look with favor upon you.”
― James A. Michener, quote from Hawaii
“Therefore, men of Polynesia and Boston and China and Mount Fuji and the barrios of the Philippines, do not come to these islands empty-handed, or craven in spirit, or afraid to starve. There is no food here. In these islands there is no certainty. Bring your own food, your own gods, your own flowers and fruits and concepts. For if you come without resources to these islands you will perish... On these harsh terms the islands waited.”
― James A. Michener, quote from Hawaii
“I live for the few minutes I can talk with a sensible human being, but every time I do, I feel worse than before.”
― James A. Michener, quote from Hawaii
“how small he was and how wormy in manner,”
― James A. Michener, quote from Hawaii
“Only a mind steeped in true love can write irony. The others write satire.”
― James A. Michener, quote from Hawaii
“If you try it,” Whip said, “you’ll be thrown out on your inalienable ass.”
― James A. Michener, quote from Hawaii
“Sometimes when the Japanese maids, in crisp white uniforms, had withdrawn, a Roosevelt appointee would ask timorously, “These Japanese, can they be trusted?” And The Fort invariably replied, “We’ve had Sumiko for eighteen years, and we’ve never known a better or more loyal maid.”
― James A. Michener, quote from Hawaii
“in 1954 it looked as if a deep schism had been driven down the middle of our community, pitting Japanese against haole, but the Sakagawa boys had the courage to back away from that tempting, perilous course. They reconciled haole and Japanese, and it is to their credit that they did so.”
― James A. Michener, quote from Hawaii
“the fundamental fact that law directs the ongoing of society. It is rooted in the past, determines the present, and protects the future.”
― James A. Michener, quote from Hawaii
“John Whipple did not allow his anger at such treatment to obscure his judgment. In years of trading around the Pacific he had often met obstinate men and the cruel situations which they produce, and he had learned that in such confrontations his only chance of winning lay in doing exactly what in conscience ought to be done. It was by reliance upon this conviction that he had quietly made his way in such disparate jungles as Valparaiso, Batavia, Singapore and Honolulu.”
― James A. Michener, quote from Hawaii
“When you are a citizen, the earth feels different.”
― James A. Michener, quote from Hawaii
“during the forthcoming even emptier years, she would still be there, a haunting vision of the other half of life, the womanliness, the caretaking symbol, the majestic, lovely, receptive other half.”
― James A. Michener, quote from Hawaii
“Patriotism is not a matter of the skin’s color. It is a matter of the heart.”
― James A. Michener, quote from Hawaii
“when the moderates were driven out, the radicals moved in,”
― James A. Michener, quote from Hawaii
“The opening sentence alone contained thirty-six words—monstrous”
― James A. Michener, quote from Hawaii
“there were many ways to judge the acts of an institution, and the pragmatic way was not the worst, by any means.”
― James A. Michener, quote from Hawaii
“Because a boy who could read would sooner or later come upon some book that would give him an idea, and a boy with an idea could accomplish almost anything.”
― James A. Michener, quote from Hawaii
“You will have to live among Americans, and they despise most freedoms, so conform.”
― James A. Michener, quote from Hawaii
“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”
― James A. Michener, quote from Hawaii
“but she possessed what was better than beauty: an absolutely realistic evaluation of life.”
― James A. Michener, quote from Hawaii
James A. Michener
Born place: in New York, New York, The United States
Born date February 3, 1907
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“There's nothing new about this story of ours, such things happen. Love misses its mark, arrives too early or too late. Nobody dies, except in novels.”
― Aminatta Forna, quote from The Hired Man
“It's another sin. Worse than all the other ones, which are immediate, violent and hot...It's the eighth deadly sin. The one God left out, Hope.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, quote from A Gathering Light
“In addition, of course, they would be taken to a bath and in the bath vestibule they would be ordered to leave their leather coats, their Romanov sheepskin coats, their woolen sweaters, their suits of fine wool, their felt cloaks, their leather boots, their felt boots (for, after all, these were no illiterate peasants this time, but the Party elite—editors of newspapers, directors of trusts and factories, responsible officials in the provincial Party committees, professors of political economy, and, by the beginning of the thirties, all of them understood what good merchandise was). "And who is going to guard them?" the newcomers asked skeptically. "Oh, come on now, who needs your things?" The bath personnel acted offended. "Go on in and don't worry." And they did go in. And the exit was through a different door, and after passing through it, they received back cotton breeches, field shirts, camp quilted jackets without pockets, and pigskin shoes. (Oh, this was no small thing! This was farewell to your former life—to your titles, your positions, and your arrogance!) "Where are our things?" they cried. "Your things you left at home!" some chief or other bellowed at them. "In camp nothing belongs to you. Here in camp, we have communism! Forward march, leader!"
And if it was "communism," then what was there for them to object to? That is what they had dedicated their lives to.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, quote from The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation, Volume 1
“Sam found a chair under Robin’s butt and evicted him from it, bringing it over to his pregnant wife.“Sorry, I wasn’t thinking,” Robin apologized.
“Thanks,” Alyssa said to Robin as she sat down, even as she gave Sam a darkly amused look.
“What?” he said. “I was just helping him think.”
― Suzanne Brockmann, quote from All Through the Night
“Not my manner of thinking but the manner of thinking of others has been the source of my unhappiness.”
― Marquis de Sade, quote from Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom, and Other Writings
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