Sharks in the Time of Saviors Quotes

“If a god is a thing that has absolute power over us, then in this world there are many. There are gods that we choose and gods that we can't avoid; there are gods that we pray to and gods that prey on us; there are dreams that become gods and nightmares that do, as well.”
― Kawai Strong Washburn, Sharks in the Time of Saviors

“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.”
― Kawai Strong Washburn, Sharks in the Time of Saviors

“But that's the problem with the present, it's never the thing you're holding, only the thing you're watching, later, from a distance so great the memory might as well be a spill of stars outside a window at twilight.”
― Kawai Strong Washburn, Sharks in the Time of Saviors

“Years already I'd been trying to understand what was inside me, while the rest of the world was trying it to tear it out.”
― Kawai Strong Washburn, Sharks in the Time of Saviors

“There was this one philosophy class I been in at the university, where the professor was talking about force. He said people think force and power is the same thing, but really force is what you use when you don't got power.”
― Kawai Strong Washburn, Sharks in the Time of Saviors

“Hope can be a god as well. It's something that can be prayed to.”
― Kawai Strong Washburn, Sharks in the Time of Saviors

“Everyone's always 'just joking,' right? Except when they're not.”
― Kawai Strong Washburn, Sharks in the Time of Saviors

“Big destiny is a thing you get drunk on.”
― Kawai Strong Washburn, Sharks in the Time of Saviors

“Take a match and hold it to the strip, start the strike. Somewhere at the microscopic level there are whole worlds of hot light that gather and jump to the match tip. That's what we were.”
― Kawai Strong Washburn, Sharks in the Time of Saviors

“It’s an impossible thing to explain, motherhood. What is lost, the blood and muscle and bone that are drawn from your body to feed and breathe a new life into the world. The bulldozer of exhaustion that hits in the first trimester, the nauseous clamps of the mornings, the warping and swelling and splitting open of everything previously taut or delicate, until your body is no longer yours but something you must survive. But those are only the physical. It’s what comes after that takes more. Whatever part of me flowed into you from my body, it turned us tight into two people that shared a soul. I believe that of all my children. Fathers will never understand the way you get deep in us, so deep that there’s a part of me that remains, always, a part of you, no matter where you go.”
― Kawai Strong Washburn, Sharks in the Time of Saviors

“My time as a mother was the same as those last gasping breaths of the owl, and soon enough you'd have to gently set down my love, fold it up into the soil of your childhood, and move beyond.”
― Kawai Strong Washburn, Sharks in the Time of Saviors

“He said people think force and power is the same thing, but really force is what you use when you don't got power.”
― Kawai Strong Washburn, Sharks in the Time of Saviors

“If someone were to ask me what money means this would be what I would say: The world feels like it will stay under you no matter what you do.”
― Kawai Strong Washburn, Sharks in the Time of Saviors

“That part doesn't matter... Or it doesn't scare me. If there's something on the other side or not. 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.”
― Kawai Strong Washburn, Sharks in the Time of Saviors

“When I close my eyes we're all still alive and it becomes obvious then what the gods want from us.”
― Kawai Strong Washburn, Sharks in the Time of Saviors

“But I'm in the water, too, I wanted to say. And there are plenty eyes on you. No one's watching to see if I stay afloat.”
― Kawai Strong Washburn, Sharks in the Time of Saviors

“Sometimes I don't know if the fight finds me or I find the fight. Especially with my family.”
― Kawai Strong Washburn, Sharks in the Time of Saviors

“I ask Mom if love ever made her feel alone. If it ever made her feel like she was starving in a room full of food.

She laughs. 'Only every day.' She leans over to me, across the gap between us, so that the side of her head touches mine....She whispers something, but I can't hear the words.

'I never thought I'd be the type of person who would do that to someone,' I say. 'Now it's exactly what I am. Forever.'

Mom nods. 'It's always like that.'

'What do you mean?' I ask.

'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.'

It's exactly what I think. So there's nothing to say....

'I'm always losing better versions of myself,' she says. 'I don't know. You just have to keep trying.'

[Kaui, in conversation with her mother Malia]”
― Kawai Strong Washburn, Sharks in the Time of Saviors

“I go itchy with want, thin on sleep. I feel her fingers in mine. The way we could be both hard and soft on each other. Her sandy voice calling out as I climb one exposed cliff after another. ... All night this all goes through me, the four hours of sleep I get.”
― Kawai Strong Washburn, Sharks in the Time of Saviors

“The more I understood what we were all made of, the more everyone I'd touched stayed inside me, still crying out, showing me their injuries over and over and over and over and over.”
― Kawai Strong Washburn, Sharks in the Time of Saviors

“I wanted us together, wanted them to feel with me the big nameless thing we'd worked our way into, a silence like the presence of our own private God.”
― Kawai Strong Washburn, Sharks in the Time of Saviors

“Take a match and hold it to the strip, start the strike. Somewhere at the microscopic level there are whole worlds of hot light that gather and jump to the match tip. That’s what we were.”
― Kawai Strong Washburn, Sharks in the Time of Saviors

“My time as a mother was the same as those last gasping breaths of the owl, and soon enough you’d have to gently set down my love, fold it up into the soil of your childhood, and move beyond.”
― Kawai Strong Washburn, Sharks in the Time of Saviors

“But that’s the problem with the present, it’s never the thing you’re holding, only the thing you’re watching”
― Kawai Strong Washburn, Sharks in the Time of Saviors

“If a god is a thing that has absolute power over us, then in this world there are many. There are gods that we choose and gods that we can’t avoid; there are gods that we pray to and gods that prey on us; there are dreams that become gods and pasts that become gods and nightmares that do, as well. As I age I learn that there are more gods than I’ll ever know, and yet I have to watch for all of them, or else they can use me or I can lose them without even realizing it.”
― Kawai Strong Washburn, Sharks in the Time of Saviors

“She never said shit like this to the boys, only to me. Like I was supposed to guilty of ambition while they were just living their full potential.”
― Kawai Strong Washburn, Sharks in the Time of Saviors

“Always, always boys. Whole classes, boys shaped like teddy beats or tree lizards. Always first to pull out their opinions, shove their knowledge at each other. I guess there's many ways engineering could feel but mostly it felt like any place feels where there's twenty boys and three girls. I had to go in with my back like a rod. Be the baddest both is what I said, in my head. And then did.”
― Kawai Strong Washburn, Sharks in the Time of Saviors

“But that’s the problem with the present, it’s never the thing you’re holding, only the thing you’re watching, later, from a distance so great the memory might as well be a spill of stars outside a window at twilight.”
― Kawai Strong Washburn , Sharks in the Time of Saviors

“Hope can be a god as well. It’s something that can be prayed to.”
― Kawai Strong Washburn, Sharks in the Time of Saviors

“Se un dio è una cosa che ha potere assoluto su di noi, allora a questo mondo ce ne sono molti. Ci sono dèi che scegliamo e dèi che non possiamo evitare; ci sono dèi da pregare e dèi predatori, ci sono sogni che diventano dèi e passati che diventano dèi, e anche incubi che fanno lo stesso. Invecchiando imparo che ci sono più dèi di quanti ne potrò mai conoscere...”
― Kawai Strong Washburn, Sharks in the Time of Saviors