How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
"'Twas Greek, sir," Dr. 09-01 lied. "I was telling the boy that according to Plato, man is defined," he said, smiling affably and gesturing to the cart, "as a featherless biped with broad nails, receptive of political philosophy." (1.18.22)
Here's the context: A Customs agent just got tarred, feathered and beaten, and 09-01 is explaining to Octavian why taxation can cause such a violent reaction to a relatively innocent man. Only one of those violent men overhears 09-01's explanation and challenges him to speak up. 09-01, of course, is too smooth and smart to fall into that trap.
Quote #5
There might no other passage in the book that shows how truly Romantic Octavian is. We don't mean romantic like the stuff that goes on between couples—we mean Romantic, as in the sense of awe that can come from observing and trying to understand Nature.
Some of you philosophy heads are going to say, "Wait, a sec… Isn't Octavian really into Enlightenment here?" We'll give you that. Octavian's going on about how to observe and measure the distance between planets, and that's definitely all science-y, Reason-y stuff.
But it's what Octavian hopes to get out of it that reveals the Romantic ideals even within an Enlightenment-like passage. He's trying to understand the distance between people and how to make people become more intimate and close to one another. It is something that baffles and overwhelms him, and it's these feelings of total awe and the humble wishing Octavian shows that makes the whole thing romantic, big-R style.
Quote #6
I had no insight; no sense of what to say; was sensible of nothing but the darkness, which was parted, which had resolved itself so that objects there were defined, though they were not objects that could be seen by light, but properties of unbeing; the furniture of negation; and so I sat, perched upon the sofa in our frigid salon; I watched unbeing in the ebon room; and together, our teeth chattered; and outside in the city, the sun rose, and it was morning. (1.26.176)
Octavian's at a loss for how to respond to his mother after Lord Cheldthorpe's men have whipped them and thrown them into the ice-house. He doesn't know how to comfort her, and instead all he can register is this general sense of "unbeing."
Note that even though Octavian is observing objects in the dark room as "unbeing," he and his mother are also like these objects of "unbeing." That's why, when he writes that "I watched unbeing in the ebon room," Octavian is both watching objects that have no sense of being (a couch, a wall, maybe even his mother) and being "unbeing" himself—it's a moment of recognition and sympathy with a world of objects.