Daily Inspiration Quote by James A. Michener

Optimism, here, isn’t a mood; it’s a workload. Michener’s line smuggles a novelist’s discipline into the language of problem-solving: nothing is magically “unsolvable,” just stubborn enough to demand more hours than we want to give. The phrasing matters. “Insoluble” is a scientific word, all lab-coat authority, but he punctures it with the blunt, almost managerial “time-consuming.” The lofty gets dragged back to the calendar.

That’s the intent: to reframe despair as impatience. Calling a problem insoluble often doubles as self-protection, a way to quit without admitting you quit. Michener offers a harsher, more bracing alternative. If the barrier is time, the real question becomes what you’re willing to spend: attention, stamina, money, years. The subtext is quietly moral. “Time-consuming” sounds neutral, but it implies responsibility and endurance; it flatters the people who keep showing up.

Context helps. Michener built doorstop epics out of research, travel, and revision - narratives engineered from accumulation. For a writer like that, “solution” isn’t inspiration; it’s persistence plus process. Read the quote as a defense of long effort in a culture addicted to hacks and shortcuts. It also has a shadow: some problems aren’t technically impossible, but they’re politically or emotionally unaffordable. Declaring them “time-consuming” exposes the real obstacle - not the universe’s limits, but ours.