How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph) or (Part.Paragraph)
Quote #4
"Our dad says there isn't going to be a war."
"Well, he's wrong."
Marshall sounded a little testy, and Lola said reassuringly, "Perhaps there will be one."
He smiled up at her. (1.5, 1.64-67)
Jackson and Pierrot are telling Paul Marshall that there may not be a war. Paul is cranky because if there's no war, he can't sell all his chocolate bars. In this book, though, Paul gets everything he wants, so the world is plunged into war and millions suffer and die, all so Paul can have his dream come true and sell chocolate bars. Jerk.
Quote #5
He thought of himself in 1962, at fifty, when he would be old, but not quite old enough to be useless, and of the weathered, knowing doctor he would be by then, with the secret stories, the tragedies and successes stacked behind him. (1.8.44)
This is Robbie imagining his future life as a doctor. Since Robbie is not Paul Marshall, imagining a happy future and making plans seals his doom. Rather than healing people, he dies of infection. Which seems really like an excessively cruel punishment for not being Paul Marshall.
Quote #6
This time she paused to peer out of the window at the dusk and wonder where her sister was. Drowned in the lake, ravished by gypsies, struck by a passing motorcar, she thought ritually, a sound principle being that nothing was ever as one imagined it, and this was an efficient means of excluding the worst. (1.9, 1.28)
Cecilia is, by the novel's lights, correct—nothing is ever as you imagine it, and every time you imagine something (like Briony thinking the rapist is Robbie, or Cecilia thinking it's Danny Hardman) you're wrong. Unfortunately, Cecilia imagining that imagining will exclude the worst is also wrong. Briony is not drowned in the lake… but she will accuse Cecilia's boyfriend of rape and ruin everybody's lives. Cecilia wasn't counting on that.