How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
We even talk a lot about religion. The Jewish Hebrew faith is a lot different than ours. They have their meetings on Saturday and they are still looking for Christ or the Messiah to come. […] I wish I knew more about my own religion so I could tell Beth. (34.1)
Alice's fascination with Beth's Judaism seems a bit weird, but that's a product of the times—if you were raised in a community that was largely homogeneous, meeting someone even a little bit different takes on a whole new level of exoticism.
Quote #2
[…] but sometimes Beth has to go out with the Jewish sons of her mother's friends. She says it's usually a big bore, and the boys don't like her any more than she likes them, but Jewish families are like that, they want their kids to marry other Jewish kids. Some night Beth is going to fix me up on a blind date with "a nice Jewish boy" to quote her mother. Beth says he'll love it because I'm not Jewish and he'll feel he's putting something over on his mother. (36.2)
Does anyone else think that if she'd stayed friends with Beth instead of diving into the drug scene, Alice's major rebellion would've been conversion to Judaism? Her tendency toward codependence makes us think if it wasn't one thing, it'd just be the other.
Quote #3
If I were only a Catholic maybe I could do some kind of terrible penance to pay for my transgressions. I was brought up to believe that God would forgive people's sins, but how can I forgive myself? How could Roger forgive me? (57.3)
Whenever Alice is coming off of a drug binge she waxes religious. She seems to turn to it like a crutch she can lean on when she can't lean on drugs—which is interesting if you think about Marx's quote calling religion the "opiate of the people." Just food for thought.