How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
And because the angel is drunk and lonely and angry with God, and because, without his even knowing it, he feels the urge, familiar among humans, to confide in someone, he tells the man the truth: that he's an angel. The man doesn't believe him, but the angel insists. The man asks him to prove it, and so the angel lifts his shirt despite the cold and shoes the man the perfect circle on his chest, which is the mark of an angel. But that means nothing to the man, who doesn't know from the mark of angels, so he says, Show me something God can do, and the angel, naïve like all angels, points to the man. And because the man thinks he's lying, he punches the angel in the stomach, sending him tottering backwards off the pier and plunging into the dark river. Where he drowns, because one thing about angels is that they can't swim. (1.94)
Since the "perfect circle on the angel's chest" is such an arbitrary symbol, we can wonder whether similar brands might be found on us all. It's through rejecting the Divine within us all that we are truly lost and alone.
Quote #8
Imagine the burden of keeping silent when your child asks you if God exists. (6.26)
In this excerpt from one of Gursky's obituaries, it goes without saying that one must keep silent because clearly God doesn't exist.
Quote #9
The rabbi told me that if I wanted I could write a note to God and add it to the cracks. I didn't believe in God, so I wrote to my father instead. (5.8)
There's a lot going on here. One thing is that Alma effectively replaces God with her absent biological father. Another important piece is that her use of the past tense ("I didn't believe in God") leaves open the possibility that she did not believe in God at the time, but now (while writing this book) she does.