James A. Michener · 344 pages
Rating: (6.3K votes)
“The permanent temptation of life is to confuse dreams with reality. The permanent defeat of life comes when dreams are surrendered to reality.”
“I can no longer take war or promotion or big income or a large house seriously. I reject empire and Vietnam and placing a man on the moon. I deny time payments and looking like the girl next door and church weddings and a great deal more. If you want to blame such rejection on grass, you can do so. I charge it to awakening.”
“Don't put off what you can do today because if you enjoy it today you can do it again tomorrow.”
“They’ll hear about your husband’s fortune. The suitors will begin to gather, and I want you to promise me this. Whenever one of them proposes, as they will, Doris must say rapturously, ‘Oh, David! All my life I’ve wanted to live in Israel.’ When he hears that she intends to live there instead of bringing him to the United States, you’ll see his interest evaporate. I said evaporate. It vanishes.” He waved his hands violently back and forth across his face to indicate total abolishment.”
“The Arabs can lose every war, if only they win the last one.”
“The Arabs can lose every war, if only they win the last one. The Jews have gained nothing if they win all the wars but lose the last one.”
“Negroes were drafted, white men weren’t; the poor were hauled off to war, the rich weren’t; the stupid were shot at, the bright boys weren’t.”
“A sensible man never brags about two things. How lovable his first wife was and how good his last school was.”
“She was always pleased when a young man said “I can’t” rather than “I won’t,” because the former indicated a moral conviction that could not be set aside, whereas the latter implied mere personal preference without a solid footing.”
“It's the good minds that find difficulty in committing themselves”
“Tanks are nothing unless they’re kept moving. Because if you leave them static, a determined team can destroy them every time.”
“In this country we get stuck with taxes, but in the old country we used to get stuck with bayonets.”
“For with my intuition I knew that this man was repeating a pattern over and over again: courting a woman with his intelligence and sympathy, claiming her emotionally; then, when she began to claim in return, running away. And the better a woman was, the sooner he would begin to run. I knew this with my intuition, and yet I sat there in my dark room, looking at the hazed wet brilliance of the purple London night sky, longing with my whole being.”
“It's luck. All is luck when skill's played out. It was luck left me with a face that didn't fit in Contact, it's luck that's made you a great game-player, it's luck that's put you here tonight. Neither of us were fully planned, Jernau Gurgeh; your genes determined you and your mother's genofixing made certain you would not be a cripple or mentally subnormal. The rest is chance. I was brought into being with the freedom to be myself; if what that general plan and that particular luck produced is something a majority — a majority, mark you; not all — of one SC admissions board decides is not what they just happen to want, is it my fault? Is it?"
"No," Gurgeh sighed, looking down.
"Oh, it's all so wonderful in the Culture, isn't it, Gurgeh; nobody starves and nobody dies of disease or natural disasters and nobody and nothing's exploited, but there's still luck and heartache and joy, there's still chance and advantage and disadvantage.”
“Seward appreciated the honest and open way that Stanton lied; it was the hallmark of the truly great lawyer, and demonstrated a professional mastery not unlike his own.”
“I...I sang," she whispered, "if that matters," and Karou felt her heart pulled to pieces. This Misbegotten warrior, fiercest of them all, had crouched in an icy stream bed to sing a chimera soul into her canteen, because she hadn't known what else to do.
The singing wouldn't have mattered, but she wasn't going to tell Liraz that. If Ziri's soul was in that canteen, Karou would happily learn whatever song Liraz had sung and make it part of her resurrection ritual forever, just so that the angel would never feel that she'd been foolish.”
“A person who cannot imagine the future is a person who cannot contemplate the results of his actions. Some are thus paralyzed into inaction.”
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