The Wayfinder Quotes

“Now, when I look at the ocean, I don’t see the stuff that strands us. I see a path to other places. And the stars aren’t indifferent. They show you the way.”
― Adam Johnson, The Wayfinder

“Kuo pau ke ke ‘alu,” she said to him. You must go. “Pea ko koe e nofo,” he responded. And you remain.”
― Adam Johnson, The Wayfinder

“Do you have sympathy for those who’re ill-fated? For those born to toil? For those who’ve been corroded by war or those who unknowingly act as agents in cautionary tales? Do you believe we’re obligated to even the lowliest among us, the least deserving, that even the worst of us are still fathers and husbands and nephews?”
― Adam Johnson, The Wayfinder

“How could you not believe in stories?” “A story’s a fragile thing, made of words. And what use are they?” “Stories endure for generations,” the Wayfinder said. “And what use are words? You must be joking. What’ve we got but words?”
― Adam Johnson, The Wayfinder

“There are many struggles in this world, and females face them double. To do that, women must look forward.”
― Adam Johnson, The Wayfinder

“In ‘Aho, the old adage was proved true: sensitive men, when exposed to atrocity, become themselves the cruelest.”
― Adam Johnson, The Wayfinder

“Ko e havilivili iho loungutu— The wind across your lips— Ko koe eni! That’s who you are! Ko e ‘one‘one iho vaha‘a louhi‘i va‘e— The sand between your toes— Ko ho ‘api eni. This is your home.”
― Adam Johnson, The Wayfinder

“What you’ve heard is true,” the Fisian chief said. “Dogs are born sweet-tempered. It’s men who make them otherwise.”
― Adam Johnson, The Wayfinder

“But who taught us our words? Where was the story of the gods giving us our talk? Did they place the words in our mouths or our minds? Or did the gods, patient, speak the words, one by one, while we, new in our skins, repeated them?”
― Adam Johnson, The Wayfinder

“A name can be an honor, a curse, or a destiny. No man gets to name himself, which is quite an irony, since who should know a person better? For most of us, a name is our only lifelong possession. For the lowliest, it’s a sole possession.”
― Adam Johnson, The Wayfinder

“In the voyage of life, one must be prepared for any destination.”
― Adam Johnson, The Wayfinder

“War is when you destroy people you don't know for reasons you don't understand, so that their lives become nothing, their deaths mean nothing, and you yourself, in time, become an unknown thing.”
― Adam Johnson, The Wayfinder

“Sometimes a test asks nothing of you but to stay strong and keep going.”
― Adam Johnson, The Wayfinder

“You must understand that life's like a story, and like a story, there's but a single path through it. This path is marked by the sacrifices you make, the kind that can't be unmade. A man is his sacrifices. In the end, he's made of nothing else.”
― Adam Johnson, The Wayfinder

“I often consider our ancestors' noble attributes. Did what was best in them make it down to us? Or did some of their defining qualities get dropped in the ongoing handoff of human lineage? Can we know what attributes never reached us? And which of our noble qualities will get lost on the journey through the generations, as an important object on a sea voyage, through a single careless gesture, is fumbled irretrievably into the sea?”
― Adam Johnson, The Wayfinder

“The ocean wasn't something you survived or got across or stayed on top of. The ever-spontaneous, all-powerful, infinite expanse of the sea was the oyster liquor of existence. Those occasional specks of dryness—of dirt and tinder and dandruffy dwellings—that was the pig-shit home man.”
― Adam Johnson, The Wayfinder

“Perhaps all that people leave behind is their voice inside your head.”
― Adam Johnson, The Wayfinder

“I could only remember the feeling of meeting someone new, someone different, and it mattered that it was him, for he was the only one in the world capable of finding me.”
― Adam Johnson, The Wayfinder

“At some point in every voyage, the familiar water around you became unfamiliar. But only by sailing onward did the unknown seas join the ranks of the known.”
― Adam Johnson, The Wayfinder

“You know how a fire can make your world feel intimate, how there's nothing beyond the realm of its curtailed light, how inside this glow is everyone you cared about, their face warm and alive, their gazes collected inward, focused on each other, so that a powerful sense of togetherness is achieved?”
― Adam Johnson, The Wayfinder

“You won’t change on ‘Ata,” the Wayfinder told me. “The wind against your lips—this is who you are.” Was I supposed to respond, The sand between your toes—this is your home?”
― Adam Johnson, The Wayfinder

“There was a silence. “The problem isn’t us,” the Tamahā said. “It’s men. Feeble, worthless, cowardly men. Where are the men of honor, where are the brave ones, where are the ones who, instead of duty, act out of devotion?”
― Adam Johnson, The Wayfinder

“Ko manupuna fuiva ‘oku fusi The fuiva bird plucks ha fulufulu ‘o ha kaume‘a mate a dead mate’s plumes ke fa‘u‘aki e pupunga hona fua. to feather a nest for their egg.”
― Adam Johnson, The Wayfinder

“We’ve planned for everything, son, since before you were born, because unless you make the future, the future makes you.”
― Adam Johnson, The Wayfinder

“To the fish in the birds’ beaks, the experience wasn’t one of lovely verse. And there was no poetry to being swallowed alive. Outside of poems, it seemed, death was just death.”
― Adam Johnson, The Wayfinder

“You must understand that life’s like a story, and like a story, there’s but a single path through it.”
― Adam Johnson, The Wayfinder

“The moment was both more than real and less than real, like when a storyteller conjures a long-ago tale—you find yourself inhabiting it, even as you’re aware it’s but a vapor of words.”
― Adam Johnson, The Wayfinder

“I have a final question as well,” she said. “Do you know that you’re missing your soul? Can you feel the lack of it?” “Missing my soul? Where might my soul be?” “Right now?” she asked. “Inside a coconut.” “A coconut?”
― Adam Johnson, The Wayfinder

“My island is the shore where I rest until dawn,” he said. “My home is the sand I unroll my mat upon.”
― Adam Johnson, The Wayfinder

“The Tamahā approached the Fisian chief. “And now we face a lamentable truth about men,” the Tamahā told the girls. “Here’s proof they are rash, foolish, and observe the world from the shade of bad judgment.”
― Adam Johnson, The Wayfinder