84 Quotes by 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.

People disappointed; animals never did.

Fear is our boon companion but never our master.

We moved into Jade Moon’s rooming house within the week, and slowly she and I found that our friendship, though damaged, was like fabric torn on the seam: not beyond repair.

I’m a practical man, Haleola. It’s true, I want to save souls. But it’s a poor church that cares only for what happens to a soul after it leaves this life. If I can provide some comfort, some ease of life for those about to lose theirs, how could I hesitate to try?

There might be more to the universe than any one religion could explain.

The weeping of grown men and women, cries of hopelessness and loss, separation and misery. And in that collective lament, Ruth heard one closer by, muted in its shame: the sound of her own father’s sobs, shocking in its newness, his familiar strength and solidity, like a once-sturdy oak, now riven with such grief and despair that it broke his daughter’s heart.

At least I know today that I will not have to wait that long.

Before Cook’s arrival the native population of Hawai’i was more than a quarter of a million people; a hundred years later, it had plummeted to fewer than sixty thousand.