Hawaii Quotes

“I'll try to communicate, Taylor said. She spoke slowly and deliberately. Hello! We need help. Is your village close?
My village is Denver. And I think it's a long way from here. I'm Nicole Ade. Miss Colorado.
We have a Colorado where we're from too! Tiara said. She swiveled her hips, spread her arms wide, then brought her hands together prayer-style and bowed. Kipa aloha.
Nicole stared. I speak English. I'm American. Also, did you learn those moves from Barbie's Hawaiian Vacation DVD?
Ohmigosh, yes! Do your people have that, too?”
― Libba Bray, Beauty Queens

“Sitting on the porch alone, listening to them fixing supper, he felt again the indignation he had felt before, the sense of loss and the aloneness, the utter defenselessness that was each man's lot, sealed up in his bee cell from all the others in the world. But the smelling of boiling vegetables and pork reached him from the inside, the aloneness left him for a while. The warm moist smell promised other people lived and were preparing supper.

He listened to the pouring and the thunder rumblings that sounded hollow like they were in a rainbarrel, shared the excitement and the coziness of the buzzing insects that had sought refuge on the porch, and now and then he slapped detachedly at the mosquitoes, making a sharp crack in the pouring buzzing silence. The porch sheltered him from all but the splashes of the drops that hit the floor and their spray touched him with a pleasant chill. And he was secure, because someewhere out beyond the wall of water humanity still existed, and was preparing supper.”
― James Jones, From Here to Eternity

“A slight breeze cooled the Hawaiian spring air, swaying the branches of palm trees, which cast black silhouettes against the purple and orange colors of the twilight sky.”
― Victoria Kahler, Capturing the Sunset

“The groundswell of outrage over the invasion of Iraq often cited the preemptive war as a betrayal of American ideals. The subtext of the dissent was: 'This is not who we are.' But not if you were standing where I was. It was hard to see the look in that palace tour guide's eyes when she talked about the American flag flying over the palace and not realize that ever since 1898, from time to time, this is exactly who we are.”
― Sarah Vowell, Unfamiliar Fishes

“We, the Hawaiian people, who are born from the union of Papahanaumoku and Wakea, earth mother and sky father, and who have lived in these islands for over 100 generations, will always have the moral right to the lands of Hawai'i now and forever, no matter what any court says.”
― Lilikalā K. Kame'eleihiwa

“Mount Kilauea spilled glowing lava like cords of orange neon-lighting from seemingly nowhere. In the blackness that engulfed the night, electric heat lit flowing streams that fell into the sea, disappearing in a cloud of steam with a sizzling splash.”
― Victoria Kahler, Capturing the Sunset

“I once heard a grouty northern invalid say that a coconut tree might be poetical, possibly it was; but it looked like a feather-duster struck by lightning.”
― Mark Twain, Mark Twain in Hawaii: Roughing It in the Sandwich Islands: Hawaii in the 1860s

“Look, Neal, Hawaii is not some magical pixie wonderland; it’s an American state populated by atomic weapons, a remnant native population and people too stupid to spell their way out of a paper bag. Most of them came here to escape pathetic lives in the forty nine other states, so in some sense, Hawaii is a scenic cul-de-sac filled with people who want to drink themselves to death without feeling judged.”
― Douglas Coupland, Worst. Person. Ever.

“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

“Write, drink and be merry!”
― Maureen A. Miller

“When the infernal machine of plantation slavery began to grind its wheels, iron laws of economics came into play, laws that would lead to immeasurable suffering but would also, and equally inevitably, produce new languages all over the world – languages that ironically, in the very midst of man's inhumanity to man, demonstrated the essential unity of humanity.”
― Derek Bickerton, Bastard Tongues: A Trail-Blazing Linguist Finds Clues to Our Common Humanity in the World's Lowliest Languages

“It was interesting to watch the Lahaina disaster victims getting an education on how their government really is!”
― Steven Magee

“In the second month of the Lahaina disaster, it was clear shady things were going on within the Maui government.”
― Steven Magee

“In August 2023, Maui became the Hawaii poverty island.”
― Steven Magee

“After the Maui wildfire disaster only 3,000 rental cars were in use, the other 18,000 were parked in fields as the tourism crashed.”
― Steven Magee

“The Maui wildfires disaster led to the Maui economic disaster.”
― Steven Magee

“In November and December 2023, the popular Maui Kaanapali beach was filled with local wildfire victims that were ‘fishing for housing’.”
― Steven Magee

“The Maui wildfire disaster turned into a sad story about government incompetence.”
― Steven Magee

“In Hawaii, you are corporate ‘ohana’ until it becomes ‘inconvenient’.”
― Steven Magee

“There was a management culture of harassing workers out of their jobs through ‘voluntary’ resignations at the biologically toxic Mauna Kea Observatories in Hawaii.”
― Steven Magee

“When I worked at the Mauna Kea Observatories in Hawaii, it was a mismanaged group of telescopes with many OSHA workplace violations.”
― Steven Magee

“The management teams of the Mauna Kea Observatories in Hawaii were withholding key health and safety information from workers and there was a secret culture of taking lone workers into surprise meetings where the management team would harass them for their ‘voluntary’ resignations.”
― Steven Magee

“By the time I left the Mauna Kea Observatories in Hawaii, I was aware the management teams were engaging in illegal activities.”
― Steven Magee

“When I visited Hawaii island in 2024, both the library and bus stop I use had security guards on them that were not there in the past.”
― Steven Magee

“Mom refused to let Gran drive the convertible up the volcano in the middle of the night.”
― Becky Dean, Picture Perfect Boyfriend

“The Thirty Meter Telescope atop Mauna Kea is arguably one of the most disliked projects in the history of scientific discovery.”
― Steven Magee

“Then his attention was caught by the bird of paradise.
"So that's what that looks like?" he asked. "Like one of the paper cranes we had to burn after Pearl Harbor." He took a step closer. "That fiery orange blossom - damned if it doesn't look like a phoenix rising from the ashes."
Ruth understood, at last, what the crane flower had represented to her mother. It wasn't Hawai'i, as much as she had loved Hawai'i. It wasn't good fortune; and it wasn't longevity. No, not even that.
It was rebirth.”
― Alan Brennert, Daughter of Moloka'i

“In Hilo, we are the `āina. Its mist is our breath, its rain our tears, its
waters our blood.
Our veins run deep, our song louder than their noise. Roots too deep to
extract. That’s the thing about hula. Burn your books, rewrite your history,
build walls, plant flags. Hula is written within the swirls of our feet. It’s our
umbilical cord, our pulse. Our battle cry, our death rattle, our moment of
conception. The chants are archived in the stars. Hula is the heat rising from
within our volcanoes. It is the pull of the tides, the beat of the surf against
our cliffs. It is our hair, our teeth, our bones. Our DNA.
You can steal a kingdom, but the kingdom will never belong to you”
― Jasmin Iolani Hakes, Hula

“Decades of desecrating Hawaii’s most sacred spaces with industrial astronomical observatories atop spiritual Hawaiian mountains appears to be in the process of ending.”
― Steven Magee

“It was common to have hallucinations atop the very high altitude mountain of Mauna Kea in Hawaii. Oxygen starvation causes it, it is known to start above 12,000 feet and we were at 13,800 feet. When I see people chatting to themselves, I have sympathy for them. They really do believe someone is with them!”
― Steven Magee