How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
Later when I knew that wouldn't work, just Please be caught, invocation or hypnosis. He got more fish but I could pretend mine were willing, they had chosen to die and forgiven me in advance. (7.34)
As a kid, the narrator used to pray to fish, begging them to let her catch them. In fact, she even came up with a fish-themed version of the Lord's Prayer. Of course, the fish is a well-known symbol for Jesus, so her conflation of the fish with self-sacrifice seems pretty apt.
Quote #8
He said Jesus was a historical figure and God was a superstition, and a superstition was a thing that didn't exist. If you tell your children God doesn't exist they will be forced to believe you are the god, but what happens when they find out you are human after all, you have to grow old and die? Resurrection is like plants, Jesus Christ is risen today they sang at Sunday School, celebrating the daffodils; but people are not onions, as he so reasonably pointed out, they stay under. (12.28)
The narrator is relaying more of her father's thoughts on religion. It seems he was more impressed by nature than the "superstition" of religion. According to him, only plants (not humans) can achieve resurrection.
Quote #9
Then they accelerated and headed off towards the cliff where the gods lived. But they wouldn't catch anything, they wouldn't be allowed. It was dangerous for them to go there without knowing about the power; they might hurt themselves, a false move, metal hooks lowered into the sacred water, that could touch it off like electricity or a grenade. I had endured it only because I had a talisman, my father had left me the guides, the man-animals and the maze of numbers. (18.5)
As we get deeper into the novel, the narrator becomes increasingly spiritual and convinced that she can receive signs and visions through her interactions with nature and the landscape. Her epiphany while swimming in the lake seems to have been the catalyst for this increased interest in a nature-based spirituality.