Keeping Faith Quotes
"In fact, I often imagine my life like a September loose-leaf binder–neatly slotted and tabbed, with everything still in place."
"I glance around the house. The carpet needs to be vacuumed, but then what will I do on Thursday?"
"It was a real bargain," my mother adds. "Please don’t tell me you got a used one."
"But there’s a chemistry involved, too. When Colin is looking at me, I know he’s not seeing me with ten pounds left behind from pregnancy or the fine strands of gray in my hair."
"The ones who are most nervous about screwing up, Mariah, are the same ones who care enough to want things to be perfect."
"She’s got to admit, the craftsmanship is to die for."
"She picks up the paper and smiles at the simple drawing of a little blond girl."
"He’s using someone else’s script," Mariah says, as Ian Fletcher lifts up a Bible and begins to read with heavy sarcasm.
"Fathers always want you to measure up to something. Mothers are the ones who love you unconditionally, don't you think?"
"I’ve seen people in comas for months wake up and start talking like nothing’s happened."
"I didn’t see a light. I didn’t see angels. I saw my mother."
"I sprang fully formed from the brow of my executive producer."
"I want to tell you something. I don’t believe your claims about your daughter–alleged resurrection included–and I’m still going to prove you wrong."
"No one can lift up all those sparks by himself."
"God may be talking to Faith because of all the people she's going to reach."
"The female part, the Shekhinah, is the presence of God."
"You have to be open to the presence of God before it comes to dwell."
"What happened to you, Mariah, that makes you fight so hard to not be a Jew?"
"The Shekhinah doesn’t go where she’s not wanted."
"I don’t look at my daughter and see the presence of God."
"That’s what many Jews said two thousand years ago about Jesus."
"God has touched this little girl, this Faith. It’s a miracle."
"If you want to call your mother when you get to wherever you’re going, then you’re going to have to keep my phone with you."
"I’m not supposed to go anywhere with strangers."
"I believe that Faith is going to be just fine."
"I’m not doing this to them; I’m doing it for everyone else."
"How could you say Greenhaven wasn’t about me?"
"Be good," she adds, then kisses Faith on the forehead.
"Because if I wasn’t, I surely would have told my producer about your little girl’s hands last week."
"You cannot stand the thought of leaving her mother behind."
"You have my word that I won’t give away your hiding place."
"When Ian was twelve, his father’s lawyer arrived in the middle of the night with the local sheriff. His parents’ plane had crashed in the Alps, and there were no survivors."
"Ian’s drive to succeed was fueled by his brother."
"What God would have taken away his parents, his childhood?"
"Ian visited him, even when his aunt and uncle stopped coming."
"On the day that Ian and Michael turned eighteen, Ian dressed in a secondhand suit from a thrift store and petitioned a Kansas City court for custody of his brother."
"He spent six years wondering what horrors Michael had suffered that made him regress."
"Ian was angry, and, to his surprise, people wanted to listen."
"Suddenly Mariah understands what has fashioned a man like Ian Fletcher."
"She also realizes that Ian might have gotten his brother into Lockwood, but Ian hasn’t gotten what he needs most of all."
"His arms close about her with such force that she cannot breathe."
"Mariah shakes her head. 'Uxorious,' she breathes. 'Excessively fond of one’s wife.'"
"Ian narrows his eyes, taking in the spark of understanding, of connection, in his brother’s eyes."
"Mariah stops thinking about Ian’s past, about Faith’s future, about anything at all."
"I don’t think we get a choice in who we fall for," Ian whispers. "I think we just do."
"I want to believe there's a God," Millie says clearly. "Because I sure as hell know there's a devil."
"I'm convinced Faith isn't lying. Which means that I can't help but believe that maybe someone else is putting her up to this."
"God's forgiving, but He's also got a long memory, and there's a reason Jews have been following a pattern of life for five thousand years."
"Faith doesn’t exhibit aversive behavior around her mother. Maybe press exposure isn’t the best thing in the world for a little girl, maybe Faith could stand to socialize more–but these things alone do not constitute abuse."
"So she’s talking to God. So what. I don’t see God telling her that the Israelites are going to cream the PLO. I don’t see God telling her to keep kosher. I don’t see God even inspiring her to come to Friday-night services."
"I have conversations with God. But you don’t see Hollywood Tonight! outside my office."
"There’s a theory that the earliest roots for God are tied to an infant looking up at his mother and knowing that it’s okay to close his eyes and imagine her, because when he opens his eyes she’ll still be there."
"I’d be a far piece more likely to pledge myself to a parent who stands between a despot–even an allegedly heavenly one–to keep him from reaching a child."
"It’s just that I haven’t been very lucky in the court system before," I say carefully. "It’s hard for me to tell you this, because you’re in the court system, and it’s probably going to sound like sour grapes."
"When I was Faith’s age, I learned that I was going to hell."
"The good news is that in a few weeks you’ll never have to see Metz again."
"This is not your news station. This is my courtroom. And in it, I’m God."
"You don’t know until you’ve lived with someone who’s suicidal."
"I’m worried about her. I think her life is in danger."
"I’m paying you a shitload of money to get a winning verdict."
"I didn’t think it was right to uproot her when her family had just broken apart."
"I love my new wife, and I love the life we’re making for ourselves."
"I’ve made mistakes that I wish I could take back."
"There are many ways to look at the same thing. You’ve seen Mr. Metz’s case. I’m going to show you the same facts, but I view them a little differently."
"Motherhood isn’t a test, but a religion: a covenant entered into, a promise to be kept."
"I was wary of believing it myself, but apparently several Catholic saints have exhibited stigmata, or spontaneous bleeding from the palms, side, and/or feet that is medically inexplicable, but also medically verifiable."
"Sometimes we even serve as those sources that other journalists refuse to reveal."
"I have never seen a woman so protective of a child, ma’am. Miz White has done her best to shelter Faith."
"How can I believe in You, when You would do this to a little girl?"
"Faith is the one thing in my life I got right on the very first try."
"She’s been intubated, to help her breathe. And they used defibrillator paddles–you know, those things–to get her heartbeat steady again."
"Just because our hearing is finished for the day does not mean anyone else’s is."
"I doubt it. As I said, they looked nothing like puncture wounds."
"It’s important that we stay inside. It won’t be too much longer."
"Mmm. That’s good," Faith says after taking a sip.
"There were a variety of other treatments for depression that would have been just as effective."
"Mariah was heavily medicated, and so removed from reality that she couldn’t stick up for herself."
"I found her to be emotionally fragile, but receptive to learning coping skills."
"As evidence of that, you need only consider that she’s waived doctor-patient confidentiality here in court."
"Mariah believes her daughter is telling the truth," he says. "For whatever that’s worth."
"The system didn’t work. Mariah White was severely depressed and overmedicated, and her own wishes were not respected."
"The same exact thing that threw her for a loop seven years ago happened again."
"Any psychiatrist in the country is going to view that as a mark of mental stability."
"No more than saying that because you eat breakfast in the morning, you’re likely to be wearing underwear."
"She’s a wonderful mother. She works twice as hard as any other parent because she’s so intent on doing the best possible job."
"I don’t think Colin was a tyrant for having me committed. He was probably terrified."
"Because I know what it’s like not to be good enough," I say softly. "That’s why I lost Colin, and I don’t ever want to go through it again."
"I would have expected my report to stand on its own. But then something happened."
"I’m going to say that it isn’t my business, and it isn’t your business."