How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
Father Arguedas took his small, perfunctory penance and said each prayer three times as an offering of joy. He did not have to give up his love [opera]. In fact, after that he changed his mind completely and decided that such beauty would have to be one with God. The music gave praise, he was sure of that, and if the words too often focused on the sins of man, well, did Jesus himself not explore this subject exactly? (2.112)
Father Arguedas has a hard time giving up opera when he thinks it's a sin. Sure, your average teenager could give up opera in an instant, but to Father Arguedas this this is what giving up Harry Potter would be to people who own Hogwarts costumes and collector's edition wands. Luckily, an older priest tells him opera is not a sin. In Patchett's world, opera isn't just not a sin; it's a gateway to the transcendent (something out-of-this-world amazing), just like religion is for many people in the book. It's no accident that the priest character in this book is in love with opera. He finds something transcendent in religion, but also in opera, which is why he's confident that opera gives praise to God.
Quote #8
There was one other person there who understood the music, but she was not a guest. Standing in the hallway, looking around the corner to the living room, was Carmen, and Carmen, though she did not have the words for it, understood everything perfectly. This was the happiest time of her life and it was because of the music. (5.205)
Patchett seems to be saying you can fall in love with art even if you're on a completely different mission, even if opera is 100% new to you. You don't even need fancy training about what an aria is or who wrote The Magic Flute (it was Mozart). Art can invade your life and change it the way that love invades and changes things.
Quote #9
"Every now and then she wouldn't bring out the book at all. She would say she was tired. She would say that so much beauty hurt her. Sometimes a week or even two could pass. No Seurat! I remember feeling almost frantic, such a dependency I had come to feel for those paintings. But it was the rest from it, the waiting, that made us love the book so madly. I could have had one life but instead I had another because of this book my grandmother protected," he said, his voice quieter now. "What a miracle is that? I was taught to love beautiful things. I had a language in which to consider beauty. Later that extended to the opera, to the ballet, to architecture I saw, and even later still I came to realize that what I had seen in the paintings I could see in the fields or a river. I could see it in people. All of that I attribute to this book." (7.122)
Not just every kid can't go a week without seeing a French impressionist painting. Fyodorov really was completely transformed by art in his childhood: it taught him to see beauty, and then he learned to see it everywhere, in nature and in other people. Patchett is reminding us here that if we can learn to appreciate beauty in one place, we can see it everywhere, and that's what's happening to most of the characters in the book as time passes. The characters learn to see what's beautiful more clearly, even while they're stuck as hostages.