How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
Family they were, obviously related, clearly sisters. When I swallowed loud, they both turned to me with the same gesture and the same expression. (19.21)
There's something both comforting and scary in the fact that sometimes you can't deny who your family is. Alma and Anney lead very different lives on the surface, but they share something that totally connects them. For Bone, it's comforting to have those kinds of unshakeable bonds when other relationships in her life are so precarious.
Quote #8
I was a Boatwright for sure, as ugly as anything. I was a freshly gutted fish, my mouth gaping open above my bandaged shoulder and arm, my neck still streaked dark with blood. Like a Boatwright all right—it wasn't all my blood. (21.293)
Bone is being pretty sardonic here, and it isn't clear whether she sees being a Boatwright as a good thing, a bad thing, or simply something that is inescapable at this moment. Given all that she has been through, we're going to guess that she's maybe more than a little bummed that all the stuff that has happened to her seems to reinforce the idea that her family is trash.
Quote #9
I wanted to tell her lies, tell her that I had never doubted her, that nothing could make any difference to my love for her, but I couldn't. I had lost my mama. She was a stranger, and I was so old my insides had turned to dust and stone. (22.43)
Remember what Earle says about how time has a way of running faster and faster all the time? Well, Bone's experiences have made her more mature, and things have suddenly become way more complicated. The real loss of Anney doesn't happen when Anney leaves; it happens when Anney embraces Glen after he rapes Bone. This seems to break what was supposed to be that unshakeable Boatwright familial bond.