James A. Michener Quotes About Writing

Quotes about: Writing

• I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent rewriter.

  James A. Michener

  Writing, Crafts, Excellent

• If your book doesn't keep you up nights when you are writing it, it won't keep anyone up nights reading it.

  James A. Michener

  Book, Reading, Writing

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

  James A. Michener

  Writing, Swings, Emotion

  Ernest Hemingway, James A. Michener (1986). “The dangerous summer”, Scribner Book Company

• I have never thought of myself as a good writer. Anyone who wants reassurance of that should read one of my first drafts. But I'm one of the world's great rewriters.

  James A. Michener

  Writing, World, Want

• I was brought up in the great tradition of the late nineteenth century: that a writer never complains, never explains and never disdains.

  James A. Michener

  Writing, Complaining, Tradition

  The Observer, November 26, 1989.

• You write that first draft really to see how it's going to come out.

  James A. Michener

  Writing, Firsts

• I was a Navy officer writing about Navy problems and I simply stole this lovely Army nurse and popped her into a Navy uniform, where she has done very well for herself.

  James A. Michener

  Writing, Army, Nurse

  "Tales of the South Pacific". Book by James A. Michener, 1947.

• The really great writers are people like Emily Brontë who sit in a room and write out of their limited experience and unlimited imagination.

  James A. Michener

  Writing, People, Imagination

  "The Michener Phenomenon". Interview with Caryn James, www.nytimes.com. September 8, 1985.

• If a young aspirant had a modicum of skill and a busy typewriter she or he would sooner or later get a foothold in one of the magazines and a leaping start on the ladder upward.

  James A. Michener

  Writing, Typewriters, Skills

• I am always interested in why young people become writers, and from talking with many I have concluded that most do not want to be writers working eight and ten hours a day and accomplishing little; they want to have been writers, garnering the rewards of having completed a best-seller. They aspire to the rewards of writing but not to the travail.

  James A. Michener

  Writing, Eight, Talking

• The job of a storyteller is to tell stories, and I have concentrated on that obligation.

  James A. Michener

  Jobs, Writing, Stories

  James A. Michener (2014). “The World Is My Home: A Memoir”, p.17, Dial Press

• As a younger man I wrote for eight years without ever earning a nickel which is a long apprenticeship, but in that time I learned a lot about my trade.

  James A. Michener

  Writing, Men, Eight

• During my lifetime I have met dozens of writers and photographers in dozens of different countries. But I have encountered no one who could both write and photograph with the artistry of Robert Vavra.

  James A. Michener

  Country, Writing, Different

• I think the crucial thing in the writing career is to find what you want to do and how you fit in. What somebody else does is of no concern whatever except as an interesting variation.

  James A. Michener

  Writing, Thinking, Careers

• I write at eighty-five for the same reasons that impelled me to write at forty-five; I was born with a passionate desire to communicate, to organize experience, to tell tales that dramatize the adventures which readers might have had. I have been that ancient man who sat by the campfire at night and regaled the hunters with imaginative recitations about their prowess. The job of an apple tree is to bear apples. The job of a storyteller is to tell stories, and I have concentrated on that obligation.

  James A. Michener

  Jobs, Writing, Adventure

  James A. Michener (2014). “The World Is My Home: A Memoir”, p.17, Dial Press

• I would suppose I learned how to write when I was very young indeed. When I read a child's book about the Trojan War and decided that the Greeks were really a bunch of frauds with their tricky horses and the terrible things they did, stealing one another's wives, and so on, so at that very early age, I re-wrote the ending of the Iliad so that the Trojans won. And boy, Achilles and Ajax got what they wanted, believe me. And thereafter, at frequent intervals, I would write something. It was really quite extraordinary. Never of very high merit, but the daringness of it was.

  James A. Michener

  Horse, Children, War

  "Storytelling Phenomenon". The Academy of Achievement interview, www.achievement.org. January 10, 1991.

• The rules seem to be these: If you have written a successful novel, everyone invites you to write short stories. If you have written some good short stories, everyone wants you to write a novel. But nobody wants anything until you have already proved yourself by being published somewhere else.

  James A. Michener

  Writing, Successful, Somewhere Else

• Being goal-oriented instead of self-oriented is crucial. I know so many people who want to be writers. But let me tell you, they really don't want to be writers. They want to have been writers. They wish they had a book in print. They don't want to go through the work of getting the damn book out. There is a huge difference.

  James A. Michener

  Book, Writing, Self

• If I were a young man, I would not hesitate at writing anything to get into print, except pornography.

  James A. Michener

  Writing, Men, Young

• In six pages, I can't even say "Hello.

  James A. Michener

  Writing, Pages, Six

  Ernest Hemingway, James A. Michener (1986). “The dangerous summer”, Scribner Book Company

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