“But if I could just get som ehint, some sign..." Conchita smiles, without humor, but with great affection. "That's the point behind faith," she says. "It's not something you can prove....I know you hate to hear this, but you either have it, or you don't.”

“There is no great religion without a great schism. All of them have it. And that's because you're dealing with something called faith. And faith is not something you can prove; faith is personal opinion. Uh, when you're dealing with something with certainty, like, y'know, science or logic, you don't have the--there's no wiggle room; that's why history is not filled with warring math cults, y'know, because you can settle the issue; you can prove something to be right or wrong, and that's the end of the argument: next case. Whereas, when you're dealing with faith, you can forever argue your point, or another point, because you're dealing with intangibles. Personally, I think, faith is what you ask of somebody when you don't have the goods to prove your point.”

“Sometimes I don't get you,' I said. She didn't even glance at me. She just smiled toward the television and said, 'You never get me. That's the whole point.”

“Sometimes I don't get you," I said.She didn't even glance at me. She just smiled at the television and said, "You never get me. That's the whole point.”

“Well, you see, she was saintly but she wasn't a saint. No one could really hate a saint, could they? They can't really hate God either. When they want to hate him and his saints they have to find something like themselves and pretend it's God and hate that. I suppose you think that's all bosh.”

“When you are missing something you've left behind, it could be dead or lost so that you never find it again. You never really know, when you don't have something, what its condition is. That's why you grieve about it to the same degree- because you just don't know.”