How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
"Your body is nothing but an envelope, Karou. Your soul is another matter, and is not, as far as I know, in any immediate danger." (6.13)
Reading this for the first time, you might think it's a little bit of New Age-y wisdom from Brimstone, informing Karou to take care of her soul over her body. However, by the end of the book, we realize that this moment is foreshadowing the fact that Karou's soul has been inside another body before.
Quote #2
This was [Karou's] life: magic and shame and secrets and teeth and a deep, nagging hollow at the center of herself where something was most certainly missing. (6.22)
You might think this nagging something is Karou's loneliness. But we think it's more likely her lack of a solid identity. All she does is go on errands for Brimstone and try to hide what she's doing for others. She has no idea why, and without that why, she has no idea who she is.
Quote #3
The blue-haired girl moved through it all like a fairy through a story, the light treating her differently than it did others, the air seeming to gather around her like held breath. As if this whole place were a story about her. Who was she? (12.8, 12.9)
These lines have a bit of double meaning. Karou is glowing to Akiva because she is his long-dead love, Madrigal, resurrected. However, this book that Karou is moving through is also pretty much a story about her. That's the whole conflict, the driving force: finding out who Karou is, really.
Quote #4
A human marked with the devil's eyes. Why? There was only one possible answer, as plain as it was disturbing. That [Karou] was not, in fact, human. (14.75-14.77)
This is the first hint that Karou isn't human. She doesn't know it yet, though. Since Akiva's not human either, maybe it takes a non-human to know one?
Quote #5
"What are you?" [Kaz] asked. Not who, but what. (19.41-19.42)
This is a pretty biting question, directed at Karou while she's smack-dab in the middle of her identity crisis. At this point, she has no idea who she is, and being called a what makes her wonder if she's really a monster after all. Poor Karou.
Quote #6
[Karou's] name, called out to her, didn't always register, and even the lay of her shadow could strike her as foreign. (22.6)
The more lost and confused Karou becomes after Brimstone's disappearance, the more disassociated from herself she becomes. As we've heard, a shadow tells the truth, so the fact that her shadow is foreign tells us that she's really someone else.
Quote #7
For the first time since [Akiva had] lost [Madrigal], his memory failed to conjure Madrigals' face. Another face intruded: Karou's. (25.31)
While this sentence can be interpreted as Akiva's newfound love/lust for Karou replacing his memory for Madrigal, it's also some subtle foreshadowing about Karou's true identity.
Quote #8
She rushed into herself and was filled. [...] She was whole. (44.3, 44.6)
Snapping the wishbone marks the moment when Karou knows exactly who she is. The pieces of the identity puzzle finally snap together. Man, we wish it was this easy in real life.
Quote #9
[Akiva] wore a horse mask of molded leather that covered his true head completely. (51.13)
The chimaera play with identity at the masquerade ball. Human-types dress as animals and vice-versa. Here, we see Akiva don a horse mask. What do you think he's trying to say about himself by assuming this as his animal identity?