Alan Brennert > Quotes

“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, Moloka'i

“Surrounded by darkness yet enfolded in light”
― Alan Brennert, Moloka'i

“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, Moloka'i

“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, Moloka'i

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

“No. Grief and anger doesn’t shock me.” Catherine paused. “Rachel, do you remember that day at the convent when we saw the old biplane? Remember what I said?” Rachel laughed without amusement. “I don’t even remember what I said.” “’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.” She smiled. “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, like Crossen, choose to do harm to themselves and others. Others, like Kenji, bear up under their pain and help others to bear it. 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.”
― Alan Brennert, Moloka'i

“God didn't give man wings; He gave him the brains 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.”
― Alan Brennert

“Learn how to smile in the cannibal pot and life will be so much easier.”
― Alan Brennert, Moloka'i

“...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, Moloka'i

“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, Moloka'i

“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, Moloka'i

“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, Palisades Park

“But it's a poor church that cares only for what happens to a soul after it leaves this life."

-Damien”
― Alan Brennert, Moloka'i

“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, Moloka'i

“A road need not be paved in gold to find treasures at its end.”
― Alan Brennert, Honolulu

“After a while the fear became a constant, cold companion, a simple fact of existence.”
― Alan Brennert, Moloka'i

“She had never been afraid of the dark, but then she had never known a dark like this before.”
― Alan Brennert, Moloka'i

“There is beauty in the least beautiful of things.”
― Alan Brennert, Moloka'i

“She'd been prepared to lose Kenji to leprosy, but not to this. Not to anger and hatred - a hatred which had infected her in turn, for she was possessed by an incendiary fury which she could not imagine would ever be extinguished.”
― Alan Brennert, Moloka'i

“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, Honolulu

“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”
― Alan Brennert, Moloka'i

“Perhaps you need to look back before you can move ahead.”
― Alan Brennert, Honolulu

“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, Moloka'i

“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, Moloka'i

“marveled at how two souls - two completely different species - could make each other so happy. If you were kind to animals, they repaid that kindness a thousandfold. People disappointed; animals never did.”
― Alan Brennert, Daughter of Moloka'i

“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, Moloka'i

“nine years earlier. Life was still”
― Alan Brennert, Moloka'i

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

“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?”
― Alan Brennert, Moloka'i

“It is enough for me to know that I left something of beauty behind and that it has thrived. I am content.”
― Alan Brennert, Daughter of Moloka'i