How we cite our quotes: (Paragraph)
Quote #1
"Well!" the young man said.
"Well!" she said.
"Well, here we are," he said.
"Here we are," she said. "Aren't we?"
"I should say we were," he said. "Eeyop. Here we are."
"Well!' she said." (5-10)
They're having trouble figuring out what to say to one another, aren't they? So, they just make a lot of "sound and fury, signifying nothing"… like idiots, according to Shakespeare.
Quote #2
"But afterwards, it'll be alright. I mean. I mean—well, look, honey, you don't look any too comfortable." (42)
"I mean" is what the husband (and the wife) say when they're avoiding talking about sex. They say they mean something else—but what they really mean is sex, ironically enough. Jeez, these crazy kids are super-awkward.
Quote #3
"I know this is the new style and everything like that, and it's probably great. I don't know anything about things like that. Only I like the kind of a hat like that blue hat you had. Gee, I liked that hat."
"Oh, really?" she said. "Well, that's nice. That's lovely. The first thing you say to me, as soon as you get me off on a train away from my family and everything, is that you don't like my hat. The first thing you say to your wife is you think she has terrible taste in hats. That's nice, isn't it?" (48-49)
The husband decides to talk about a hat he really does like, which either gets misinterpreted or correctly interpreted as meaning he does not like the hat the wife does have—despite the fact that he says it's "probably great." That doesn't sound like a very strong, ringing endorsement of the hat—partly because he fails to pad his opinion sensitively enough, despite his best efforts.