The World Is My Home Quotes

“At times, working in big cities far from nature, I have been sick with nesomania, and I think the reason is this: On the islands one has both the time and the inclination to communicate with the stars and the trees and the waves drifting ashore, one lives more intensely.”
― James A. Michener, World Is My Home

“What did I learn in my travels? In whatever foreign country I visited I met dreamers who longed to reach America and its promise of an enriched life so I knew we had a country rich in opportunity, but I also met those brilliant Jews already in America who had been denied that promise.”
― James A. Michener, World Is My Home

“With my pen I have engraved warrants of citizenship in the most remote corners, for truly the world has been my home.”
― James A. Michener, World Is My Home

“No writer ever knows enough words but he doesn’t have to try to use all that he does know. Tests would show that I had an enormous vocabulary and through the years it must have grown, but I never had a desire to display it in the way that John Updike or William Buckley or William Safire do to such lovely and often surprising effect. They use words with such spectacular results; I try, not always successfully, to follow the pattern of Ernest Hemingway who achieved a striking style with short familiar words. I want to avoid calling attention to mine, judging them to be most effective as ancillaries to a sentence with a strong syntax.
My approach has been more like that of Somerset Maugham, who late in life confessed that when he first thought of becoming a writer he started a small notebook in which he jotted down words that seemed unusually beautiful or exotic, such as chalcedony, for as a novice he believed that good writing consisted of liberally sprinkling his text with such words. But years later, when he was a successful writer, he chanced to review his list and found that he had never used even one of his beautiful collection. Good writing, for most of us, consists of trying to use ordinary words to achieve extraordinary results.
I struggle to find the right word and keep always at hand the largest dictionary my workspace can hold, and I do believe I consult it at least six or seven times each working day, for English is a language that can never be mastered.* [*Even though I have studied English for decades I am constantly surprised to find new definitions I have not known: ‘panoply’ meaning ‘a full set of armor’, ‘calendar’ meaning ‘a printed index to a jumbled group of related manuscripts or papers’.
—Chapter IX “Intellectual Equipment”, page 306”
― James A. Michener, The World Is My Home: A Memoir

“Luck plays such an overpowering role in some lives that the thoughtful person must ask: ‘Why have I been cursed with bad luck while another is blessed with so much good luck?’ Believe me, the fortunate person who receives the favorable breaks also wonders about his favored situation. In my case, I have no explanation. I was hardworking; I had a tough character; I was a good student; and I acknowledged the leadership of my superiors. But no amount of hard work or high standard of behavior could have brought the many good things that happened to me; pure chance dictated most of them. The only generalization I can offer is that in an irrational world if a prudent course has been followed, you make yourself eligible to capitalize on luck if it happens to strike. If you have not made yourself eligible, you may never be aware that luck is at hand. By all this I mean: learn typing, master math, learn to draft a convincing letter, broaden the mind, and do not evade challenges. Making oneself eligible to seize the breaks if and when they come is the only sensible strategy I know. Be prepared to make full use of any stroke of luck, and even if it never comes, the preparation in itself will be a worthy effort.”
—Chapter VIII, “Writing”, page 289”
― James A. Michener, The World Is My Home: A Memoir

“One of the most expensive commodities a nation can have is a cheap labor force. From this a host of consequences leaped forth as inevitable.
—If you get labor for almost nothing, you have no incentive to buy expensive tools and the quality of your product will lag behind that of nations who do use the best tools on the market.
—If you keep your labor occupied on menial tasks that are best suited to machines, your work force never develops those skills that would earn you more income.
—If you employ ten to do the work of one, none of the ten will work to maximum efficiency because each will realize that what he or she does isn’t significant.
—If you don’t pay your labor good wages, how can they ever afford to buy what you make? You limit your potential market by 50 percent at least, and if every employer in the region pays the same low wages, your market can vanish altogether.
—A nation’s wealth is generated when the money from wages is quickly spread around because this causes more goods to be produced, and real wealth consists in the making and interchange of goods.
And then I made the discovery: ‘Ricardo was wrong. There is no fixed quantum of money in the world, or in any nation. The rich man doesn’t suffer deprivation when labor gets a bigger share, for that larger amount means a bigger total for him.’”
—Chapter VII, “Ideas”, page 257-258”
― James A. Michener, The World Is My Home: A Memoir

“In my adult life I have proved time and time again that I can keep more or less in mind details of some five hundred books on the topics to which I have dedicated myself. I take no notes but do list on the inside back cover of certain books page numbers to which I know I will want to refer, later followed by one word to indicate subject matter, but even without this aid I can and do go quickly to the right book and the correct page, more or less, for the data I need. When I fail, I fail completely and can think of no clue that would lead me to the page I want; this would mean I had not implanted it firmly enough in my mind. I am not talking theoretically. I have done this at least a dozen times with my long novels, keeping a hundred characters in mind, controlling a tangle of different story lines, and remembering many individualized locations. I doubt that I am remarkable in possessing such a skill. I suspect that many clergymen can do the same with the Bible and it’s obvious that some lawyers can maintain control over a huge volume of case law just as scientists can master a jungle of relevant experimentation in their fields. But I have done it in a score of different fields: astrophysics, geography, ancient religions, art, politics, contemporary revolutionary movements, and popular music.”
—Chapter IX, “Intellectual Equipment”, page 301”
― James A. Michener, The World Is My Home: A Memoir

“These riches never die. The great songs echo still, the colors of the paintings do not fade. They accompanied me as I trudged the lower heights of the Nanga Parbat in the Himalayas and comforted me as I stood lashed to the wheel while our small boat wallowed through the tail end of a Pacific typhoon. They have echoed in my mind when I needed consolation and been at hand when I required dedication to some old task or inspiration in a new. As I [sic] child I probed for the secrets of art; as a young man I tried to winnow the good from the bad; and as an adult I remain totally committed. Perhaps I have loved art too much and allowed myself to be made a prisoner of it, but from the manner in which I began my exploration it could have ended no other way. p114”
― James A. Michener, The World Is My Home: A Memoir

“Which of your experiences best epitomizes the essence of traveling?' To be in a small boat at four in the morning in an ocean, any ocean, but particularly in the South Pacific, and to know that you are on a proper heading for a tropical island, and to watch as light from the still-hidden sun begins to filter into the eastern sky. And then, because you are in the part of the earth where, because of the bulge near the equator, the sun rises and sets with a tremendous crash, to see it suddenly explode into red brilliance, big enough to devour the world. And then to see ahead, its crest inflamed by the sun, the dim outline of the island you have been seeking, and to watch it slowly, magically rise from the sea until it becomes whole, a home for people, a resting place for birds. p136.”
― James A. Michener, The World Is My Home: A Memoir

“I now see that the harsh years of childhood and my premature introduction to the financial problems of adult life, especially at the Willow Grove amusement park, produced gaps in my life and perhaps even psychological imbalances, as a result of which I have never handled money well. It isn't that I have abused it or allowed it to abuse me; I have been contemptuous of it. If it could do the damage it did to my mother and me when I was a child, and if it achieved so relatively little in the development of my playmates who had plenty, it could be dismissed, and I did just that. It is important to note that I never adopted as my basic reaction the biblical creed that it was more difficult for a wealthy man to enter heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. I never objected to someone else's having money, and I do honestly believe that never in any period in my life has envy of other people's affluence played even a minor role. p464”
― James A. Michener, The World Is My Home: A Memoir

“I wrestled with these three questions all Friday and found no answers, nor could I think of anyone to whom I might appeal for help, but on that tempestuous weekend I slowly managed to resolve the problems. On the basic question of who I was I decided that I would never know the answer, that a hailstorm of solutions would probably be thrown at me, and that I would never be clever enough to sort truth from legend. As calmly as if I were a practiced surgeon performing a major operation, I cut that part of life out of my existence, then and forever. I did not know who I was, nor did I care, and what was more important, I would never again bother myself about it. I would not daydream, I would not construct what-ifs, and I would find contentment in myself as I was at any given moment; I would have no envy for anyone else's position, no shame for my own. From that moment of decision I never wavered or looked back. I knew who I was, a young man of nineteen with certain proved abilities and known weaknesses ready for the long haul of years that lay ahead. p487”
― James A. Michener, The World Is My Home: A Memoir