James A. Michener

I’ve always thought that God placed Spain where He did to keep things organized.” Don Ramón arranged dishes and rolls to represent Europe. “Lesser nations all around her. Portugal here, and what a sorry land that is. France up here, a bunch of troublemakers. England over here, accch!” The harsh guttural showed what he thought of England. “And down here the despicable Moors, enemies of God and man.” In the center of this maelstrom of failed nations and infidels he placed a bright orange: “Spain: God’s bastion of reason, and stability, and all the things that represent goodness in this life.

Religions are always in trouble,” Tabari said. “In adversity they grow honest. It’s good for them.

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.

He was reminded that men may be angels, but they are animals, too. They are driven by uncontrollable forces and only the love of other people makes it possible for them to survive. Men are lonely and are stricken in the night. They lock their jaws against themselves. They scream like animals, and even though they ridicule love and the forces of destruction, they are themselves theatres for the operation of such forces.

Dutch smugglers kept slipping in more slaves from Africa. There were two developments which worried thoughtful men in both Barbados and England: with the slow depletion of the soil, it became more difficult each year to grow the basic crops, tobacco being especially destructive

The only thing to buy on credit is your casket

Unless you think you can do better than Tolstoy, we don’t need you.

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.

The Rockies are therefore very young and should never be thought of as ancient. They are still in the process of building and eroding, and no one today can calculate what they will look like ten million years from now. They have the extravagant beauty of youth, the allure of adolescence, and they are mountains to be loved.

We seek God so earnestly, Eliav reflected, not to find Him but to discover ourselves.

If you try it,” Whip said, “you’ll be thrown out on your inalienable ass.

especially the Japanese and Russian

They were the ships of Task Force 77 and they had been sent to destroy the communist-held bridges at Toko-ri.

He loved to tell his students a story which summarized his attitudes on this matter of intellectual inspection: “A Roman came to Rabbi Gimzo the Water Carrier, and asked, ‘What is this study of the law that you Jews engage in?’ and Gimzo replied, ‘I shall explain. There were two men on a roof, and they climbed down the chimney. One’s face became sooty. The other’s not. Which one washed his face?’ The Roman said, ‘That’s easy, the sooty one, of course.’ Gimzo said, ‘No. The man without the soot looked at his friend, saw that the man’s face was dirty, assumed that his was too, and washed it.’ Cried the Roman, ‘Ah ha! So that’s the study of law. Sound reasoning.’ But Gimzo said, ‘You foolish man, you don’t understand. Let me explain again. Two men on a roof. They climb down a chimney. One’s face is sooty, the other’s not. Which one washes?’ The Roman said, ‘As you just explained, the man without the soot.’ Gimzo cried, ‘No, you foolish one! There was a mirror on the wall and the man with the dirty face saw how sooty it was and washed it.’ The Roman said, ‘Ah ha! So that’s the study of law! Conforming to the logical.’ But Rabbi Gimzo said, ‘No, you foolish one. Two men climbed down the chimney. One’s face became sooty? The other’s not? That’s impossible. You’re wasting my time with such a proposition.’ And the Roman said, ‘So that’s the law! Common sense.’ And Gimzo said, ‘You foolish man! Of course it was possible. When the first man climbed down the chimney he brushed the soot away. So the man who followed found none to mar him.’ And the Roman cried, ‘That’s brilliant, Rabbi Gimzo. Law is getting at the basic facts.’ And for the last time Gimzo said, ‘No, you foolish man. Who could brush all the soot from a chimney? Who can ever understand all the facts?’ Humbly the Roman asked, ‘Then what is the law?’ And Gimzo said quietly, ‘It’s doing the best we can to ascertain God’s intention, for there were indeed two men on a roof, and they did climb down the same chimney.

Timelessly, relentlessly, in storm and hunger and hurricane the island was given life, and this life was sustained only by constant new volcanic eruptions that spewed forth new lava that could be broken down into life-sustaining soil. In violence the island lived, and in violence a great beauty was born.