Sharks In The Time Of Saviors Quotes
"The wind came on and the trees clattered like applause."
"Sometimes I believe none of this would have happened if we’d stayed on the Big Island, where the gods are still alive."
"It wasn’t as dark as I had expected inside, the trees were low with sun breaks."
"That’s me that first night in Spokane. For real I felt all the kings that came before me in a heavy way, like they was right inside my heart, like they was chanting through my blood."
"It was almost like no one in all of San Diego had a job."
"I was always the one that had to be the adult this way."
"We both knew she’d made a mistake with the paddles."
"We’d made something, just sitting there together, meeting each other over and over."
"Everything’s at least a little bit about money."
"I’m delivering. Plenty times after work, me and Eddie and Kirk-guys all met in the back of the parking lot to tailgate."
"Whole string of 6:00 a.m.’s go, me with more ride-alongs."
"How do you have the world by the nuts and then let go."
"Shit is so simple anyone that’s not as dumb as me would’ve seen ’um coming."
"This gonna be a problem, you doing a route through here?"
"I thought that was the start. I thought I knew what was coming."
"I had failed, and in my failure I had killed a mother and her daughter."
"It should have been given to someone else. I hate what’s in me."
"It felt good, because it was you, but it’s not—it’s not who I am."
"Mom called telling me that Noa went missing."
"Strangers remembered more about what I did in this or that game."
"It hits me: islands like Jamaica maybe know more about the way things are than half of this country."
"But we’ll always be here, if you ever want to come."
"Your father and I coordinate our work schedules and get a Saturday off together."
"I can still do this, and who knows what it’s gonna make me after."
"I’d never felt Noa’s death, really. Not the way I thought I was supposed to."
"I’m locked back in my work, climb back out of the hole of last semester."
"It’s an impossible thing to explain, motherhood."
"I’m surprised how wrong Nainoa was about you."
"We break out a front window and everyone will know what’s going on."
"The air’s already gone flat and cottony like the apartment’s been empty for years."
"I think the neighbor saw. She definitely maybe saw us."
"Just stay away from the windows," Kaui says.
"What was it like?" she asks, her voice quiet.
"You mean the place. Where you found him."
"You ever think you felt things the way Noa felt ’um?" I ask.
"Listen," he says. "Listen, listen, listen. It’s not just a dance."
"It’s boring, Mom, I swear to God," I say. "Don’t nothing happen. We just sit and sit and sit."
"Me and Noa got some things in common," I say.
"It’s always fucking raining," I say to her. "When does this stop?"
"Sometimes it seems like it never will," she says, "But then, all at once, summer comes. Wait until you see how it feels."
"It’s just like what I’d get at Spokane, when I’d go back on the court way after the interviews and the showers, when there was no more music and no more crowd, no more rush."
"The ripe, shit-seedy smell of pakalolo drifts in through the gap, spreads in my nose."
"This small-ass house, and you’re still always surprising me."
"You’ve always been tita like that. At least I did one thing right."
"Whenever I’ve made a choice in my life, a real choice… I can always feel the change, after I choose. The better versions of myself, moving just out of reach."
"I’m always losing better versions of myself. You just have to keep trying."
"It’s the getting there, you know? That last minute when you’re leaving, still living in this world even as it’s closing up around you. You have to do that part alone."
"It’s exactly what I think. So there’s nothing to say."
"Everything you are now is because of us."
"Everything gotta start somewhere. Everything big starts small."
"Your daughter. I hate for say it, but she figured this out."
"It’s the same as what was there last night, in the song with Kaui, buzzing through my bones when I played the ‘uke."
"We beat our run out on the road. And the road it beats us back."
"The whole time I was back in Hawai‘i, I run into people and they’re all ‘I remember when you scored thirty-five against Villanova, last-minute bank shot.’"
"I feel the breath of life in the valley."
"We were once here with horses riding across the land and when they ran we ran and when they walked we walked."
"I am the centipede thrashing deep under the rocks. I am the burrowed bird tucked sleeping in the tree."
"I am the man named Augie and I am the blood that pumps inside and I am the sand that was blown to life with the breath of all our gods."