How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
After all it was painful to imagine that one might be "not just right"—particularly if what was wrong was not your fault but "maybe a thing you were born with." Look at his family! […] His mother, an alcoholic, had strangled on her own vomit. […] Fern, the other daughter, had jumped out of a window of a San Francisco hotel. […] And there was Jimmy, the older boy—Jimmy, who had one day driven his wife to suicide and killed himself the next. (2.115)
Perry must have read this article about the heritability of substance abuse and criminal behavior. Actually, there's a lot of evidence that certain kinds of mental illness can be inherited, but does this mean that life experiences can't make it much worse?
Quote #5
"The murderous potential can become activated, especially if some disequilibrium is already present, when the victim-to-be is unconsciously perceived as a key figure in some past traumatic configuration." (4.172)
We think Perry said it better. This sounds exactly like what happened at the moment Perry killed Herb Clutter.
Quote #6
Spells of helplessness occurred, moments when he "remembered things"—blue light exploding in a black room, the glass eyes of a big toy bear—and when voices, a particular few words, started nagging his mind: "Oh, no! No, please! No! No! No! No! Oh, please don't, please!" and certain sounds returned—a silver dollar rolling across a floor, boot steps on hardwood stairs, and the sounds of breathing, the gasps, the hysterical inhalations of a man with a severed windpipe. (2.114)
Perry's describing having flashbacks, sudden episodes of vivid imagery of the murders. This is part of what his psychiatrist said was "dissociation." Flashbacks are a common experience for people who've been through life-threatening traumatic events in the past.