Alan Brennert Quotes & Sayings

What's it like? Being married?
Cold feet. Middle of the night you're sleeping, suddenly, wham, you've got ice cold feet warming themselves on the back of your legs. — Alan Brennert

I've come to believe that how we choose to live with pain, or injustice, or death ... is the true measure of the Divine within us. — Alan Brennert

An aching vacuum inside her sucking the air from her lungs. She hung her head and wept fiercely, the emptiness inside her growing larger not smaller; she felt as though it would grow so large it would suffocate her just as surely as the sea would have — Alan Brennert

Then Rachel said, "Mama used to tell me that God saw everything, knew everything, even what was in our hearts."
"Yes," Catherine agreed, "especially there."
"So, He'd know, wouldn't he, what kind of pain was in your mama's heart when she took that medicine." She didn't wait for a reply. "So why can't you trust that God knows enough not to blame her for what she did. — Alan Brennert

How stupid could she be to think a clean person would love her
would risk death and decay and banishment for love! — Alan Brennert

Surrounded by darkness yet enfolded in light — Alan Brennert

It is not just the history of the Hawaiian islands but the significance of the ordinary people whose lives - many quite extraordinary - make up that history. — Alan Brennert

When we are young, we think life will be like a supo: one fabric, one weave, one grand design. But in truth, life turns out to be more like the patchwork cloths-bits and pieces, odds and ends-people, places, things we never expected, never wanted, perhaps. — Alan Brennert

And all they could do was sit, sleep, eat, and be reminded day after day, night after night, of their disease and eventual death. — Alan Brennert

By now the streets of Kalaupapa were filled with people racing for high ground - sick people crying
"Tsunami!" as nature played yet another mean trick on them, God's last best joke at their expense. It was,
after all, April Fool's Day. — Alan Brennert

Legend holds that seesaws became popular with girls because on the upswing they were able to catch a glimpse of the world beyond their cloistered walls. — Alan Brennert

After a while the fear became a constant, cold companion, a simple fact of existence. — Alan Brennert

Perhaps you need to look back before you can move ahead. — Alan Brennert

A road need not be paved in gold to find treasures at its end. — Alan Brennert

- he took her in his arms and cradled her; offering her not God's comfort but his own, merely human, consolation. — Alan Brennert

You make all these decisions in your life, and they all seem like the right decisions at the time. You think you're doing the right thing. And it's only later that you realize, no, they were exactly the wrong decisions, and instead of bringing you what you wanted, they only carried you even farther away from your dreams. And somehow you've got to live with that. — Alan Brennert

No land is more beautiful, and therefore more powerful. That is what I believe in, Aouli. I believe in Hawai'i. I believe in the land.
-Haleola — Alan Brennert

Learn how to smile in the cannibal pot and life will be so much easier. — Alan Brennert

And sometimes she would dream again of being Namakaokahai'i, her waves rolling across burled coral beds, scattering moonlight, cresting higher and higher the farther she traveled over the reef. She was a colossus of water and motion soaring toward the black crescent of 'Awahuua Bay, her soul perched on the curling lip of the wave, riding it in the only way she could now; she felt the mana, the power in her waves, felt the rumble in her ocean depths ... — Alan Brennert

Summer in Honolulu brings the sweet smell of mangoes, guava, and passionfruit, ripe for picking; it arbors the streets with the fiery red umbrellas of poincianta trees and decorates the sidewalks with the pink and white puffs of blossoming monkeypods. Cooling trade winds prevail all summer, bringing what the old Hawaiians called makani 'olu' 'olu
"fair wind". — Alan Brennert

Who can doubt the presence of God in the sight of men whom He has given wings?
I recall that so precisely because I've had time to consider my error. God didn't give man wings; He gave him the brain and the spirit to give himself wings. Just as He gave us the capacity to laugh when we hurt, or to struggle on when we feel like giving up.
I've come to believe that how we choose to live with pain, or injustice, or death ... is the true measure of the Divine within us. Some choose to do harm to others. Others bear up under their pain and help others to bear it. — Alan Brennert

We make a home for ourselves, every time we work on something: actors, writers, singers, building these little nests in our gypsy souls, in place of the ones we so seldom seem to make in our own lives. And then suddenly it's over, and we have to start again. — Alan Brennert

Isn't it strange, how one so afraid of contracting a fatal malady ... should so earnestly wish for death, as well? — Alan Brennert

She thought for a moment, then said, When we are young, we think life will be like a su po: one fabric, one weave, one grand design. But in truth, life turns out to be more like the patchwork cloths
bits and pieces, odds and ends
people, places, things we never expected, never wanted, perhaps. There is harmony in this, too, and beauty. I suppose that is why I like the chogak po. — Alan Brennert

She bid me to look out on the lawn at the leper girls who were running on lame feet, playing croquet with crippled hands.
"There is beauty," she said, "in the least beautiful of things. — Alan Brennert

But it's a poor church that cares only for what happens to a soul after it leaves this life.
-Damien — Alan Brennert

Rachel found herself wishing that the week would never end-that her father could stay here forever-but knew he couldn't. If there was one thing she had learned in her brief time at Kalaupapa, it was that all things end. — Alan Brennert

Quoting an old proverb: "An empty cart rattles loudly." she said. meaning, One who lacks substance boasts loudest. — Alan Brennert

They toured the new hospital, the renovated and expanded McVeigh Home, and the (named without apparent irony) Bay View Home for the Blind and Helpless. — Alan Brennert

SMILE - IT NO BROKE YOUR FACE!
-on a stone in Kalaupapa — Alan Brennert

Carve the peg by looking at the hole.' Eddie looked at me blankly and I explained, 'An old Korean saying. It means, Do things to fit the circumstances. — Alan Brennert

With wonder and a growing absence of fear she realized, I am more than I was an hour ago. — Alan Brennert

*And to keep her immune system strong she followed Dr. Goodhue's advice to abstain from alcohol, get plenty of fresh air and exercise, and consume a nourishing diet, low in salt. Page 144
"Fear is good. In the right degree it prevents us from making fools of ourselves. But in the wrong measure it prevents us from fully living. Fear is our boon companion but never our master.". Page 204
"I've come to believe that how we choose to live with pain, or injustice, or death ... Is the true measure of the Divine within us." ... "I used to wonder, why did God give children leprosy? Now I believe: God doesn't give anyone leprosy. He gives us, if we choose to use it, the spirit to live with leprosy, and with the imminence of death. Because it is in our own mortality that we are most Divine.". Page 307
**"With wonder and a growing absence of fear she realized, I am more than I was an hour ago.". Page 372
**my favorite! — Alan Brennert

None of the patients could say the experiments didn't yield some benefits. It was the way the experiments were conducted that grated: with cold, clinical detachment. Masks, gloves, and carbolic acid were the order of the day fora ll staff, and while this may have been prudent it only made isolated people feel even more isolated. — Alan Brennert

Old Korean adage, "Even jade has flaws." Or, in other words: Nothing in life is ever perfect. — Alan Brennert

She had never been afraid of the dark, but then she had never known a dark like this before. — Alan Brennert

Hawai'i has often been called a melting pot, but I think of it more as a 'mixed plate'
a scoop of rice with gravy, a scoop of macaroni salad, a piece of mahi-mahi, and a side of kimchi. Many different tastes share the plate, but none of them lose their individual flavor, and together they make up a uniquely 'local' cuisine. This is also, I believe, what America is at its best
a whole greater than the sum of it's parts. — Alan Brennert

Hawai'i is not truly the idyllic paradise of popular songs
islands of love and tranquility, where nothing bad ever happens. It was and is a place where people work and struggle, live and die, as they do the world over. — Alan Brennert

She would follow her father over the horizon and down the other side, where the world lay hidden. — Alan Brennert

Fear is good. In the right degree it prevents us from making fools of ourselves. But in the wrong measure it prevents us from fully living. Fear is our boon companion but never our master. — Alan Brennert

It slowly dawned on the volunteers that they were not patients but subjects; separated from their friends and community in Kalaupapa, they felt like outcasts among outcasts. — Alan Brennert

Love, marriage, divorce, infidelity ... life was the same here as anywhere else, wasn't? She realized now wrong she'd been; the pali wasn't a headstone and Kalaupapa wasn't a grave. It was a community like any other, bound by ties deeper than most, and people here went to their deaths as people did anywhere: with great reluctance, dragging the messy jumble of their lives behind them. — Alan Brennert

She already felt dead in everything but name. What remained to be taken from her? She longed to be enfolded, welcomed, into the earth - to breathe no more, love no more, hurt no more — Alan Brennert