“Everybody has to feel superior to somebody," she said. "But it's customary to present a little proof before you take the privilege.”

“Faith is not a feeling, she says. It's a set of actions. By taking the actions, you demonstrate more faith than somebody who actually has experienced the rewards of prayer and so feels hope.”

“Everybody is following somebody. Everybody has faith in something and somebody. We are all believers.”

“Yes, after all, this by now was his customary loneliness: there was little else he desired for the present than the hospitality of the dark.”

“Do you think everybody misses somebody? Like I miss my mama?” “Mmmm-hmmm,” said Gloria. She closed her eyes. “I believe, sometimes, that the whole world has an aching heart.”

“That is why she dislikes dreams: they impose an unacceptable equivalence among the various periods of the same life, a leveling contemporaneity of everything a person has ever experienced; they discredit the present by denying it its privileged status.”