Mr Michener, as timeless as a stack of 'National Geographics,' is the ultimate Summer Writer. Just as one goes back to the cottage in Maine, so one goes back to one's Michener.

For Catholics before Vatican II, the land of the free was pre-eminently the land of Sister Says-except, of course, for Sister, for whom it was the land of Father Says.

Of course, history is only a muddle of facts and a fuddle of professors, and anyone who thinks it is one clear voice saying "Arise, sir Knight" deserves a life sentence in Camelot.

Saloons provide moments of genuine ecstasy - but only if your soul is at peace and the rest of your life bears contemplating. Otherwise, they are palaces of misery.

I picked up the writing on the very day he died. It was the only consolation I could find.

The only reason I didn't kill myself after I read the reviews of my first book was because we have two rivers in New York and I couldn't decide which one to jumo into.

The American male doesn't mature until he has exhausted all other possibilities.

Suicide is about life, being in fact the sincerest form of criticism life gets.

If the French were really intelligent, they'd speak English.

The worse we treat people in this country, the more delicately we talk about them.

The actual Irish weather report is really a recording made in 1922, which no one has had occasion to change. "Scattered showers, periods of sunshine."

Every solider believes in war till the time he actually fights it.

The universe requires balance. Nothing, nothing, can exist without it. There is no life, no light, without death, without darkness. There is no memory… without emptiness.

As the Eastern saying, by the sage Hilali, has it, 'one person who understands is worth a hundred who merely obey a custom.

Deeply consider that it is your duty and interest to read the Holy Scriptures.

I encourage you to find your punk-rock, your lucha-libre, your pro-wrestling

The sea which we think of separating the two island actually joins them.

The creative process of making a movie really turned me on. I'd started getting behind the scenes with a camcorder and VHS tape when making music videos.

I know what "custody" [of the children] means. "Get even." That's all custody means. Get even with your old lady.

I don't know what my IQ is. People who gloat about their IQ's are losers

Science works its miracles by turning its enterprise into a kind of parlor game confined to the category matter and energy.