For my 11th birthday, I asked to be adopted. Kaui Hart Hemmings More Quotes by Kaui Hart Hemmings More Quotes From Kaui Hart Hemmings That's how you know you love someone, I guess, when you can't experience anything without wishing the other person were there to see it, too. Kaui Hart Hemmings missing-someone wish i-miss-you Why is it so hard to articulate love yet so easy to express disappointment? Kaui Hart Hemmings hard disappointment easy I'm sorry," I say. "I didn't give you everything you wanted. I wasn't everything you wanted. You were everything I wanted. Kaui Hart Hemmings sorry wanted giving I think grief and fear are going to come to him suddenly. They'll be undiluted and words won't work. We're all going to get hit and won't know how to hit back. I wish I knew the answers, how to help myself and the people who will hurt all around me. Kaui Hart Hemmings grief hurt thinking I like the way men cry. They're efficient. Kaui Hart Hemmings cry men way Because feeling love does make you feel superior. Until you find out you aren't loved back. Kaui Hart Hemmings doe feelings feels ...we’re just kids growing up on an island, doing bad things in pretty places. Kaui Hart Hemmings growing-up islands kids I don't ask what Alex sees in him because I'm afraid my disapproval will make her latch on to him even more. That's how it works. I'll have to pretend he doesn't bother me and that I don't want to drown him in the bay. Kaui Hart Hemmings latches alex want I'll never be ready. Yet at the same time, you always want to reach the end. You can't fly to a destination and linger in the air. I want to reach the end of this thing, and I feel terrible about it. Kaui Hart Hemmings ends air want A sea of red lights, and I slow down. My job now is to gather everyone together and tell them we have to let her go. I won't tell anyone over the phone, because I didn't like hearing the news from the doctor that way. I have maybe a week to handle the arrangements, as the doctor said, but the arrangements are overwhelming. How do I learn how to run a family? How do I say goodbye to someone I love so much that I've forgotten just how much I love her? Kaui Hart Hemmings running goodbye jobs The sun is shining, mynah birds are chattering, palm trees are swaying, so what. I'm in the hospital and I'm healthy. My heart is beating as it should. My brain is firing off messages that are loud and clear. My wife is on the upright hospital bed, positioned the way people sleep on airplanes, her body stiff, head cocked to the side. Her hands on her lap. Kaui Hart Hemmings airplane sleep heart In putting setting to work, I like to think about long shots and close-ups. The long shot is the overall view of the place in which the characters live - the island, the town, the wide sweep of place. Then we narrow in. The close-up, the tight focus, makes the place different from anywhere else. Kaui Hart Hemmings view focus work long My seven-year-old daughter knows old songs and how the neighborhoods got their names. There are little things: Businesses receive blessings from Hawaiian priests before opening, and everyone's kids have their debut luau. You can't really get through a day without doing something Hawaiian. Kaui Hart Hemmings day you little-things daughter When a place comes across vividly in a novel, it's often compared to a character. I can remember writing teachers who encouraged me to treat setting as if it were a character, to give it three dimensions, to make it come alive, jump off the page. Kaui Hart Hemmings treat me remember character I wasn't creative enough to imagine my first novel becoming a film directed by Alexander Payne. Nor did I consider the possibility of seeing Hollywood stars moving through my personal version of Hanalei town: going to Tahiti Nui, rehearsing a scene in front of my cousin's cottages, driving the snaky roads. Kaui Hart Hemmings roads driving stars moving I felt like I haven't had the typical experience of a novelist whose book becomes a movie. Kaui Hart Hemmings like felt experience book Two days a week, I go to my office at The Grotto, a writer's collective in San Francisco. I get there at 8:15 and write until around 1 or 2 P.M. Kaui Hart Hemmings go week office two I try to think of it not as writer's block, but a time where you just need to live life and experience things so you have something to write about. Kaui Hart Hemmings you experience time life After college, I moved to Breckenridge, Colorado, and went snowboarding every day. I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I knew what I didn't want to do. So I applied to grad school for writing, and I just gave it a shot and took it from there. Kaui Hart Hemmings every-day day college school The beauty of cinema is that it can do some things that novels just can't. Kaui Hart Hemmings some things cinema beauty