Moloka'i 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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“December 22, 1980, the Kalaupapa peninsula was designated a National Historical Park and its residents were, as per Public Law 96–565, “guaranteed that they may remain at Kalaupapa as long as they wish.” As of this writing, there are approximately thirty-one individuals with Hansen’s disease living there in quiet dignity.”
― Alan Brennert, Moloka'i

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

“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.”
― Alan Brennert, Moloka'i

“Who can doubt the presence of God in the sight of men whom He has given wings.'...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 beliece that how we choose to live with painm or injustice, or death. . . . is the true measure of the Divine withing us. Some, like Crossen, choose to do harm to themselves adn 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

“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, Moloka'i

“In 1898, while at war with Spain in the Pacific, the United States Congress decided Hawai'i would be a strategic asset and issued a joint resolution annexing the islands, which President McKinley signed into law. Hawai'i became only the second sovereign nation to join the United States. But unlike the Republic of Texas, where a public referendum was held, no one asked the thirty-one thousand native Hawaiians whether they wished to give up their country. Twenty-nine thousand of them signed a petition of protest, which was submitted to Congress and politely ignored.”
― Alan Brennert, Moloka'i

“Yet sometimes it seems the world is more moved by the death of one white priest than by the passing of hundreds, thousands, of Hawaiians. Everyone knows Damien’s name now, but will anyone remember these girls, other than you and me?”
― Alan Brennert, Moloka'i

“To see the infinite pity of this place,
The mangled limb, the devastated face,
The innocent sufferers smiling at the rod,
A fool were tempted to deny his God. He sees, and shrinks; but if he look again,
Lo, beauty springing from the breast of pain!—
He marks the sisters on the painful shores,
And even a fool is silent and adores.”
― Alan Brennert, Moloka'i