“The permanent temptation of life is to confuse dreams with reality. The permanent defeat of life comes when dreams are surrendered to reality.”
― James A. Michener, quote from The Drifters
“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.”
― James A. Michener, quote from The Drifters
“Don't put off what you can do today because if you enjoy it today you can do it again tomorrow.”
― James A. Michener, quote from The Drifters
“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.”
― James A. Michener, quote from The Drifters
“The Arabs can lose every war, if only they win the last one.”
― James A. Michener, quote from The Drifters
“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.”
― James A. Michener, quote from The Drifters
“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.”
― James A. Michener, quote from The Drifters
“A sensible man never brags about two things. How lovable his first wife was and how good his last school was.”
― James A. Michener, quote from The Drifters
“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.”
― James A. Michener, quote from The Drifters
“It's the good minds that find difficulty in committing themselves”
― James A. Michener, quote from The Drifters
“Tanks are nothing unless they’re kept moving. Because if you leave them static, a determined team can destroy them every time.”
― James A. Michener, quote from The Drifters
“In this country we get stuck with taxes, but in the old country we used to get stuck with bayonets.”
― James A. Michener, quote from The Drifters
James A. Michener
Born place: in New York, New York, The United States
Born date February 3, 1907
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“We were beginning to understand why, in pre-anaesthetic days, the Bible had stipulated that suicide was a sin. Anything other than the prospect of eternal damnation, and the human race would probably have done away with itself at the first sign of the dentist.”
― Kate Griffin, quote from The Midnight Mayor
“as I said,I believe in fate.Things happen as they are meant to be.We just have to recognize our destiny.”
― Edward Rutherfurd, quote from Russka: the Novel of Russia
“He seems to be in a very bad temper.” “Not really. He’s always like that to waiters. You see he’s a communist. Most of the staff of The Twopence are—they’re University men, you see. Pappenhacker says that every time you are polite to a proletarian you are helping to bolster up the capitalist system. He’s very clever of course, but he gets rather unpopular.”
― Evelyn Waugh, quote from Scoop
“She reached her waiting chair and shorthand pad, beside Leach, as a far-off erratic voice came indistinctly over the loudspeaker, and then suddenly broke out loudly and clearly. "—calling from Frankfurt am Main, this is Signal Corps Captain Foss calling from Frankfurt am Main. Do we have the White House in Washington?" Calmly Secretary of State Eaton addressed the microphone box. "This is the White House, Captain. This is the Secretary of State. We are assembled and ready for the conference call." "All right, sir. The President is waiting to speak to you." A muffled crossing of voices slapped against the loudspeaker, and then a jagged arrow of static, and at once T. C.'s hurried, bouncy, unceremonious voice was upon them in the Cabinet Room. "Arthur, are you there?”
― Irving Wallace, quote from The Man
“Overuse at best is needless clutter; at worst, it creates the impression that the characters are overacting, emoting like silent film stars. Still, an adverb can be exactly what a sentence needs. They can add important intonation to dialogue, or subtly convey information.”
― Howard Mittelmark, quote from How Not to Write a Novel: 200 Classic Mistakes and How to Avoid Them—A Misstep-by-Misstep Guide
Shadow Heir
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The Curious Case of...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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