Top 70 Alan Brennert Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “An empty cart rattles loudly,” she said, meaning, One who lacks substance boasts loudest.”

— Alan Brennert

2. “A road need not be paved in gold to find treasures at its end.”

— Alan Brennert

3. “Aloha means to see the ‘uhane – the living spirit, immortal soul, whatever you call it – in everyone you meet.”

— Alan Brennert

4. “She thought for a moment, then said, “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.”

— Alan Brennert

5. “Learn how to smile in the cannibal pot and life will be so much easier.”

— Alan Brennert

6. “People disappointed; animals never did.”

— Alan Brennert

7. “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.”

— Alan Brennert

8. “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

9. “When we are young, we think life will be like a supo: 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.”

— Alan Brennert

10. “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 other to bear it.”

— Alan Brennert

11. “Let the things of long ago drift away on the water.”

— Alan Brennert

12. “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

13. “There is beauty in the least beautiful of things.”

— Alan Brennert

14. “Perhaps you need to look back before you can move ahead.”

— Alan Brennert

15. “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.”

— Alan Brennert

16. “Kindness is scarce in the world.”

— Alan Brennert

17. “Good-for-nothing rascal, where you been the last eight months?” And she kissed him with a ferocity that quite belied her words.”

— Alan Brennert

18. “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.”

— Alan Brennert

19. “Her grief was a storm, a driving rain falling too fast to be absorbed.”

— Alan Brennert

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

— Alan Brennert

21. “After a while the fear became a constant, cold companion, a simple fact of existence.”

— Alan Brennert

22. “I listened, rapt and silent, as he conjured from the cold black type the image of a woman of many years past, shivering in the chill predawn light as she waited for the sun to rise.”

— Alan Brennert

23. “She learned what ’ohana truly meant, and that she was a part of it. She began to understand that none of this could replace or usurp the family she had always known, but only enriched what she already possessed. With wonder and a growing absence of fear she realized: I am more than I was an hour ago.”

— Alan Brennert

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

— Alan Brennert

25. “Korean clothes, both men’s trousers and women’s skirts, were of one size, with waistbands that could be tightened or loosened as needed. Koreans know that the human body is always changing – so why try to make one’s body fit into some garment of arbitrary size? But Americans seemed quick to bow to the tyranny of a fitted garment – and just as quick to cheat that fit when they could not live up to its restrictions.”

— Alan Brennert

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

— Alan Brennert

27. “She listened to a life’s story that was, she discovered, richer than it was sad.”

— Alan Brennert

28. “I am secure in the knowledge that I am the mother of your heart,” Etsuko said, smiling. “But she is the mother of your blood. She deserves to see what a fine woman you have become.”

— Alan Brennert

29. “Ruth 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.”

— Alan Brennert

30. “Moloka’i. It was not a name spoken lightly in these islands. Sometimes it was called “Moloka’i of the potent prayers,” known for centuries as the home of powerful sorcerers capable of praying men to death, of sending giant fireballs hurtling across the sea, fiery planets of destruction seeking out hapless victims. Today the island was still an object of fear and fascination; but for very different reasons.”

— Alan Brennert

31. “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.”

— Alan Brennert

32. “He had the look, it seemed to me, of a man who had awakened one day to find himself clinging to the cattle catcher of an express train: under the circumstances, all one could do was to hang on.”

— Alan Brennert

33. “I did not know this word, “lynching,” but when I asked Jade Moon about it she explained, “As I understand, it refers to a custom in the American South, where white men may punish the darker peoples with impunity by hanging them from trees.” I was speechless. How could such barbarity exist in a land of freedom like America? What country was this, in which I had been living all these years?”

— Alan Brennert

34. “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.”

— Alan Brennert

35. “We make a home for ourselves, every time we work on something: actors, writers, singers, building these little nests in our gypsy souls, in place of the ones we so seldom seem to make in our own lives. And then suddenly it’s over, and we have to start again.”

— Alan Brennert

36. “She laughed at that, and finally accepted the gift. “Thank you,” she said, bowing, “for your kampana.” This was a Buddhist term that spoke of when “good people’s hearts are moved” to do a compassionate act. “May I ask the name of our benefactor?”

— Alan Brennert

37. “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.”

— Alan Brennert

38. “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

39. “She remembers the pain of losing him, but she smiles at the happiness he brought her, cherishing the joy she felt at his side.”

— Alan Brennert

40. “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

41. “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

42. “Diedrichson looked at her a moment as if processing a foreign and generally unwanted thought – then, to her surprise, his frown up-ended itself into a smile.”

— Alan Brennert

43. “No cat is bad luck.”

— Alan Brennert

44. “Fear is our boon companion but never our master.”

— Alan Brennert

45. “It was disquieting to Eddie, this jarring contrast between the bright, cheery atmosphere inside Palisades and the slowly darkening world outside it. As calliope music played and diapered babies crawled in derbies, bombs fell on the other side of the world, which no longer seemed so comfortably distant.”

— Alan Brennert

46. “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.”

— Alan Brennert

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

— Alan Brennert

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

— Alan Brennert

49. “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.”

— Alan Brennert

50. “I liked the fact that the happiest night of my life was followed by a day like any other. It seemed to say that such happiness, so long denied, was now a part of my everyday life.”

— Alan Brennert