Quotes from Alan Brennert

It is enough for me to know that I left something of beauty behind and that it has thrived. I am content.

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

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 loses its 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 its parts. I

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.

Kindness is scarce in the world

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.

nine years earlier. Life was still

Unemployment in America became, almost overnight, a thing of the past as the Federal government pumped billions of dollars into defense.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Rachel was becoming adept at sensing when something was going unsaid by adults: it was as if there were an invisible object sitting amid their visible words and Rachel was learning to judge its shape and size by feel alone.

This was life, and if some things were kapu, others weren't; she had to stop regretting the ones that were and start enjoying the ones that were not.

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.

Aloha means to see the 'uhane—the living spirit, immortal soul, whatever you call it—in everyone you meet.

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.

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.

The difference between Old Honolulu and New, she would come to decide, was the difference between a beautiful woman who was simply being herself and a beautiful woman calling attention to herself: a little vain perhaps, but you couldn't say she wasn't attractive.

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.

wondering at what point rational fear of contagion turned to unreasoning dread

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.