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About A Billion Years Ago, Long Before The Continents Had Separated To Define The Ancient Oceans, Or Their Own Outlines Had Been Determined, A Small Protuberance Jutted Out From The Northwest Corner Of What Would Later Become North America.

-James A. Michener

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About A Billion Years

James A. Michener

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About A Billion Years Ago, Long Before The Continents Had Separated To Define The Ancient Oceans, Or Their Own Outlines Had Been Determined, A Small Protuberance Jutted Out From The Northwest Corner Of What Would Later Become North America.

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I Was Brought Up In The Great Tradition Of The Late Nineteenth Century: That A Writer Never Complains, Never Explains And Never Disdains.

The Really Great Writers Are People Like Emily Brontë Who Sit In A Room And Write Out Of Their Limited Experience And Unlimited Imagination.

When I Was A Child In The Navy During World War Ii, I Was Perennially Grateful To The Armed Services Libraries For Having On Hand A Good Supply Of Those Pocket Books, Which Were So Common In That Period. I Must Have Read A Couple Hundred Of Them, And They Did A Lot To Save My Sanity.

Scientists Dream About Doing Great Things. Engineers Do Them.

A Soldier Lives Always For The Next Battle, Because He Knows That Before It Arrives Impossible Changes Can Occur In His Favor.

I Wish I Could Tell You About The South Pacific. The Way It Actually Was. The Endless Ocean. The Infinite Specks Of Coral We Called Islands. Coconut Palms Nodding Gracefully Toward The Ocean. Reefs Upon Which Waves Broke Into Spray, And Inner Lagoons, Lovely Beyond Description. I Wish I Could Tell You About The Sweating Jungle, The Full Moon Rising Behind The Volcanoes, And The Waiting. The Waiting. The Timeless, Repetitive Waiting.

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.

An Age Is Called Dark Not Because The Light Fails To Shine, But Because People Refuse To See It.

The Dead Are Dead But They Rely On Us To Fulfill Their Hopes.

I've Spent My Life Trying To Be Better Than I Was, And I Am A Brother To All Who Share The Same Aspiration.

No Man Leaves Where He Is And Seeks A Distant Place Unless He Is In Some Respect A Failure.

It Is Difficult To Be King When The Gods Are Changing.

Public Libraries Have Been A Mainstay Of My Life. They Represent An Individual's Right To Acquire Knowledge; They Are The Sinews That Bind Civilized Societies The World Over. Without Libraries, I Would Be A Pauper, Intellectually And Spiritually.

About A Billion Years Ago, Long Before The Continents Had Separated To Define The Ancient Oceans, Or Their Own Outlines Had Been Determined, A Small Protuberance Jutted Out From The Northwest Corner Of What Would Later Become North America.

. . . Luddites Were Those Frenzied Traditionalists Of The Early 19th Century Who Toured [england] Wrecking New Weaving Machines On The Theory That If They Were Destroyed . . . Old Jobs And Old Ways Of Life Could Be Preserved . . . At Certain Times In His Life Each Man Is Tempted To Become A Luddite, For There Is Always Something He Would Like To Go Back To. But To Be Against All Change-against Change In The Abstract-is Folly.

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.

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.

Not Too Many People Work In A Job Where, Waiting Out There Are Three Or Four Hundred People Who Are Paid To Tear Apart What You've Done. And Often They Are Brighter Than You Are, Or They Know More About The Subject Than You Do, Or They Wish They Had Written A Book Themselves, Or Done A Lot Better. Or They Just Don't Like It! And You Have To Live With It.

For All Its Enormous Range Of Space, Climate, And Physical Appearance, And For All The Internal Squabbles, Contentions, And Strivings, What You Northerners Never Appreciate...is That Texas Is So Big That You Can Live Your Life Within Its Limits And Never Give A Damn About What Anyone In Boston Or San Francisco Thinks.

No Idea Is Ever Dead Until Those Who Believe In It Say It's Dead.

I Was Born To A Woman I Never Knew And Raised By Another Who Took In Orphans. I Do Not Know My Background, My Lineage, My Biological Or Cultural Heritage. But When I Meet Someone New, I Treat Them With Respect.... For After All, They Could Be My People.

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.

On 24 October 1944 Planet Earth Was Following Its Orbit About The Sun As It Has Obediently Done For Nearly Five Billion Years.

You Write That First Draft Really To See How It's Going To Come Out.

If I Were A Young Man, I Would Not Hesitate At Writing Anything To Get Into Print, Except Pornography.

[the Church's] Job Is To Provide Permanent Solace And Spiritual Leadership To The People As A Whole, Whatever Their Government At The Moment, So Long As It Stays Within The Bounds Of Moral Decency.

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.

Animals Form An Inalienable Fragment Of Nature, And If We Hasten The Disappearance Of Even One Species, We Diminish Our World And Our Place In It.

Don't Put Off For Tomorrow What You Can Do Today Because If You Enjoy It Today, You Can Do It Again Tomorrow.

Procrastination

I Was Once Asked If I'd Like To Meet The President Of A Certain Country. I Said, "no, But I'd Love To Meet Some Sheepherders." The Sheepherders, Farmers And Taxi Drivers Are Often The Most Interesting People.

Russia, France, Germany And China. They Revere Their Writers. America Is Still A Frontier Country That Almost Shudders At The Idea Of Creative Expression.

Only Another Writer, Someone Who Had Worked His Heart Out On A Good Book Which Sold Three Thousand Copies, Could Appreciate The Thrill That Overcame Me One April Morning In 1973 When Dean Rivers Of Our Small College In Georgia Appeared At My Classroom Door

We Are Never Prepared For What We Expect.

It Takes Courage To Know When You Ought To Be Afraid.

Every Animal That Walks The Earth, Or Swims, Or Flies Is Precious Beyond Description, Something So Rare And Wonderful That It Equals The Stars Or The Ocean Or The Mind Of Man.

...when Men Ignite In Their Hearts A Religious Fury, They Inflict At The Same Time A Blindness On Their Eyes.

I'm Not A Very Good Writer, But I'm An Excellent Rewriter.

First Buy A Cowboy Hat And Boots. Then You're On Your Way To Being A Texan.

Character Consists Of What You Do On The Third And Fourth Tries.

As A Writer I Have Persisted In My Uncertainty, Alternating Between Novels Which Could Charitably Be Considered Literature And World Reporting Which By Another Stretch Of Objective Standards Might Be Called History.

Organizations Like The Church Or General Motors Promote A Man Up And Up Until He Reaches A Spot Which He Is Obviously Incapable Of Filling, And There They Lay Him To Rest.

We Should Be Most Careful About Retreating From The Specific Challenge Of Our Age. We Should Be Reluctant To Turn Our Back Upon The Frontier Of This Epoch... We Cannot Be Indifferent To Space, Because The Grand Slow March Of Our Intelligence Has Brought Us, In Our Generation, To A Point From Which We Can Explore And Understand And Utilize It. To Turn Back Now Would Be To Deny Our History, Our Capabilities.

It Heartens Me To Think Of Verdi Who Composed Thundering Operas In His Eighties; Michelangelo Who Did Fine Work In His Ninetieth Year, And Titian, Who Painted Better Than Ever In His One Hundredth.

A Writer Can Make A Fortune In America, But He Can't Make A Living.

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.

In A Small Polish Farm Community, During The Fall Planting Season Of 1981, Events Occurred Which Electrified The World, Sending Reverberations Of Magnitude To Capitals As Diverse As Washington, Peking And Especially Moscow.

I Do Believe That Everyone Growing Up Faces Differential Opportunities. With Me, It Was Books And Travel And Some Good Teachers.

The Chief Character In This Narrative Is The Caribbean Sea, One Of The World's Most Alluring Bodies Of Water, A Rare Gem Among The Oceans, Defined By The Islands That Form A Chain Of Lovely Jewels To The North And East

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.

Things Are Going To Go Wrong, And I Think We Are False To Life If We Don’t Portray It. But There Is Also The Hope That Some Lucky Clown Is Going To Come Along And Stumble Into The Gold Mine. And I Think You Are Also Entitled To Hold Out That Hope.

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.

The Extreme Geniality Of San Francisco's Economic, Intellectual And Political Climate Makes It The Most Varied And Challenging City In The United States.

A Group Of Two Dozen Nurses Completely Surrounded By 100,000 Unattached American Men.

You Have To Be Eligible For Luck To Strike, And I Think That's A Matter Of Education And Preparation, And Character And All The Other Solid Attributes That Sometimes People Laugh At.

I Am A Humanist Because I Think Humanity Can, With Constant Moral Guidance, Create Reasonably Decent Societies. I Think That Young People Who Want To Understand The World Can Profit From The Works Of Plato And Socrates, The Behaviour Of The Three Thomases, Aquinas, More And Jefferson - The Austere Analyses Of Immanuel Kant And The Political Leadership Of Abraham Lincoln And Franklin Roosevelt.

All I Can Do Is Play The Game The Way The Cards Fall.

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.

Creative Geniuses Are A Slap-happy Lot. Treat Them With Respect.

I Love Writing. I Love The Swirl And Swing Of Words As They Tangle With Human Emotions.

Writers Turn Dreams Into Print.

Religious Hatreds Ought Not To Be Propagated At All, But Certainly Not On A Tax-exempt Basis.

The Master In The Art Of Living Makes Little Distinction Between His Work And His Play, His Labor And His Leisure, His Mind And His Body, His Information And His Recreation, His Love And His Religion. He Hardly Knows Which Is Which. He Simply Pursues His Vision Of Excellence At Whatever He Does, Leaving Others To Decide Whether He Is Working Or Playing. To Him He's Always Doing Both.

If Your Book Doesn't Keep You Up Nights When You Are Writing It, It Won't Keep Anyone Up Nights Reading It.

I Think The Bottom Line Is That If You Get Through A Childhood Like Mine, It's Not At All Bad. Obviously, You Come Out A Pretty Tough Turkey, And You Have Had All The Inoculations You Need To Keep You On A Level Keel For The Rest Of Your Life. The Sad Part Is, Most Of Us Don't Come Out.

I Kept Careful Record Of The Impact Of Religion On The Election In My County. The Religious Issue Permeated Every Meeting I Conducted. It Influenced Republicans And Democrats Alike. Ministers Preached Politics Publicly And Churches Distributed The Most Vicious Electioneering Materials. Practically No One I Met Escaped The Pressure Of This Overriding Problem And Both Parties Were Ultimately Forced To Make Their Major Calculations With The Religious Question A Foremost Consideration.

I Never Wrote Anything That Was Published Until I Was Forty.

I Wondered How A Man Ever Got An English Girl Into Bed. What Did They Do With Her Hockey Stick?

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.

America Is A Nation With Many Flaws, But Hopes So Vast That Only The Cowardly Would Refuse To Acknowledge Them.

Rampaging Horsemen Can Conquer; Only The City Can Civilize.

If A Man Happens To Find Himself, He Has A Mansion Which He Can Inhabit With Dignity All The Days Of His Life.

I Had Learned Volleyball In The Navy, Where All The Captains And Admirals Wanted To Be Spikers, And I Found Then That A Man Who Can Subdue His Own Desires And Master The Art Of Serving Others Can Make Himself Invaluable. In Choosing Sides The Team Captain Always Chose The Good Spikers On The First And Second Choice, But Then The Spikers Would Grab His Arm And Whisper, 'take Michener.' I Was Never Chosen Lower Than Third, Because I Was Needed. I Wasn't Good, But I Was Faithful.

A Nation Becomes What Its Young People Read In Their Youth. Its Ideals Are Fashioned Then, Its Goals Strongly Determined.

If You Reject The Food, Ignore The Customs, Fear The Religion And Avoid The People, You Might Better Stay Home.

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.

The Decent Thing To Do Is To Get Rid Of Some Of This Money.

When This Is Over, I'm Not Going To Be The Same Guy. I Am Going To Live As If I Were A Great Man.

I Think Young People Ought To Seek The Experience That Is Going To Knock Them Off Center.

The Sense Of Belonging Is One Of The Great Gifts Men Get In Battle.

For This Is The Journey That Men And Women Make, To Find Themselves. If They Fail In This, It Doesn't Matter Much Else What They Find.

In Six Pages, I Can't Even Say "hello.

Although Most Of Us Know Vincent Van Gogh In Arles And Paul Gauguin In Tahiti As If They Were Neighbors -- Somewhat Disreputable But Endlessly Fascinating -- None Of Us Can Name Two French Generals Or Department Store Owners Of That Period. I Take Enormous Pride In Considering Myself An Artist, One Of The Necessaries.

We Risk Great Peril If We Kill Off This Spirit Of Adventure, For We Cannot Predict How And In What Seemingly Unrelated Fields It Will Manifest Itself. A Nation That Loses Its Forward Thrust Is In Danger, And One Of The Most Effective Ways To Retain That Thrust Is To Keep Exploring Possibilities. The Sense Of Exploration Is Intimately Bound Up With Human Resolve, And For A Nation To Believe That It Is Still Committed To A Forward Motion Is To Ensure Its Continuance.

Many People Who Want To Be Writers Don't Really Want To Be Writers. They Want To Have Been Writers. They Wish They Had A Book In Print.

I Had Been Educated With Free Scholarships. I Went To Nine Different Universities, Always At Public Expense, And When You Have That Experience, You Are Almost Obligated To Give It Back. It's As Simple As That.

The Permanent Temptation Of Life Is To Confuse Dreams With Reality. The Permanent Defeat Of Life Comes When Dreams Are Surrendered To Reality.

It Was The Silent Time Before Dawn, Along The Shores Of What Had Been One Of The Most Beautiful Lakes In Southern Africa.

I Am Terrified Of Restrictive Religious Doctrine, Having Learned From History That When Men Who Adhere To Any Form Of It Are In Control, Common Men Like Me Are In Peril.

I Was Surprised When Shortly After New Year's Day Of 1983, The Governor Of Texas Summoned Me To His Office, Because I Hadn't Been Aware That He Knew I Was In Town.

Contrary To What People Think, I Slave Over My Books.

I Think Young People Ought To Seek That Differential Experience That Is Going To Knock Them Off Dead Center. I Was A Typical American School Boy. I Happened To Get Straight A's And Be Pretty Good In Sports. But I Had No Great Vision Of What I Could Be. And I Never Had Any Yearning.

The Arrogance Of The Artist Is A Very Profound Thing, And It Fortifies You.

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.

The Most Sheer Fun I Ever Had In Sports Was Playing Volleyball, A Game I Commend Highly. I Understand That An Effort Is Under Way To Establish A National League Of Professional Volleyball Teams, And If You Have Ever Seen The Great Women's Teams Of Japan And Russia Or The Equally Good Men's Teams Of Cuba And East Germany, You Know How Exciting This Playground Game, Which Requires So Little Equipment, Can Be.

I Thought That Perhaps The Most Creative Mix For A Society Would Be Nine Parts Solid Worker From Institutions Like Mit To One Part Poet From Marrakech, But In Spite Of The Fact That I Myself Had Been Trained To Be One Of The Solid Workers, Which Meant That All Of My Sympathies Lay With That Group, I Would Not Surrender The Poet. The Problem Was To Find Him.

Never Forget, Son, When You Represent Texas, Always Go First Class.

A Poet Sees Things In Two Ways: First, As A Child Who Never Saw It Before, And Second, As A Dying Man Who Will Never See It Again.

I Have Only One Bit Of Advice To Beginning Writers: Be Sure Your Novel Is Read By Rodgers And Hammerstein.

Beginning Writers

You Don't Fight To Protect Warships Or Old Men. Like The Book Says, You Fight To Save Your Civilization. And So Often It Seems That Civilization Is Composed Mainly Of The Things Women And Children Want.

The Job Of A Storyteller Is To Tell Stories, And I Have Concentrated On That Obligation.

No Invader Has Ever Conquered The Heart Of Poland, That Spirit Which Is The Inheritance Of Sons And Daughters, The Private Passion Of Families And The Ancient, Unbreakable Tie To All Those Who Came Before.

I Don’t Know Who My Parents Were. I Know Nothing About My Inheritance. I Could Be Jewish; I Could Be Part Negro; I Could Be Irish; I Could Be Russian. I Am Spiritually A Mix Anyway, But I Did Have A Solid Childhood Fortunately, Because Of Some Wonderful Women Who Brought Me Up. I Never Had A Father Or A Man In The House, And That Was A Loss...

There Are No Insoluble Problems. Only Time-consuming Ones.

Millions Upon Millions Of Years Ago, When The Continents Were Already Formed And The Principal Features Of The Earth Had Been Decided, There Existed, Then As Now, One Aspect Of The World That Dwarfed All Other ... A Mighty Ocean, Resting Uneasily To The East Of The Largest Continent, A Restless Ever-changing, Gigantic Body Of Water That Would Later Be Described As Pacific.

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