How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
She knew that none of the workers liked her. People never had. On the ward a large girl had asked her to play tennis and the shock had sounded down to the last level of Yr. (3.4)
Deborah is so accustomed to her version of reality, in which she believes no one likes her, that even those in her imaginary world are shocked that someone extends a sign of friendship to her. There is obviously a difference between how others perceive Deborah and how she thinks they do. Haven't we all experienced this kind of paranoia? Haven't we all thought, at some point, that people were laughing at us?
Quote #2
There was a groan from Lactamaeon, the black god, and a derisive laugh from the Collect, which were the massed images of all the teachers and relatives and schoolmates standing eternally in secret judgement and giving their endless curses. (3.10)
Deb has internalized the negative things kids who bullied her when she was young said about her. She's also internalized some things she's heard her parents say about her. These experience have have scarred her so much that she assumes everyone thinks bad things about her, even when they first meet her.
Deborah's desperate to impress people, but she's also terrified of what they think of her. The voices of the Great Collect seem to represent these fears the most: they yell out the taunts she's heard before. Deborah says she's clumsy, lazy, wayward, unfriendly. These are obviously words she's heard others, possibly even her parents, say about her.
Quote #3
The color life had been set and only the despair could deepen. She was always off by herself sketching they had said, but she never let anyone see the pictures. (Ch.9.14)
Deborah doesn't see the role she played in isolating herself here. One day, some pictures fell out of her sketchbook, and the kids at school were trying to figure out who the drawings belonged to. Deborah was so afraid of rejection that she acted like the pictures weren't hers. Then she became angry that the kids were making her "repudiate" her art, when in reality, they probably admired it. Deborah's perception of reality is one in which she is hated—but that's not always the case.
Quote #4
"It's a quality of myself, a secretion, like sweat. It is the emanation of my Deborah-ness and it is poisonous" [...] the joy of self-loathing had taken Deborah as fully as if it had been love, and she went on and on, decorating and embellishing the foulness, throwing the words higher and higher. (10.27-29)
Deborah wants negative attention because it protects her from possible rejection. It's almost safer to think of yourself as awful, because that way, you never risk being hurt. It's messed up, but this is how Deborah feels.
Quote #5
Deborah feels a slow, fearful gratitude to her family, who had lived with a monster and treated it like a person. (10.48)
Deborah remembers trying to kill Suzy when she was only a baby. Deborah feels tremendous guilt about it, and she feels it's further proof she isn't human. Her version of reality is twisted, thought: her parents never mentioned walking in and seeing Deborah holding Suzy out the window…because this is something Deborah only thought about doing and never acted on.
Quote #6
Then she was standing above herself, dressed in her Yri rank and name, kicking the herself that was on the floor, kicking her low in the stomach and in the tumorous place that gave like a rotten melon. (13.9)
Deborah sees a nurse acting clumsy, fidgeting with keys, and tripping. She reaches out to the nurse, whispers words of comfort to her, and grabs her arm before she falls, but the nurse is freaked out by the contact and leaves the room in a hurry. The incident makes Deborah retreat into Yr, and the self-loathing is so strong that she punishes herself with an out-of-body experience.
Quote #7
She was looking at her patient intently, interested in that world which had been a refuge once, had suddenly gone gray, and was now a tyranny whose rulers Deborah had to spend long days of her life propitiating. (8.6)
Dr. Fried tries to figure out how Deborah's alternate reality of Yr has evolved from an escape from reality to a punishing force in Deborah's life. Yr punishes Deborah whenever she tries to escape it; that's because secretly, Deborah is afraid of what might happen if she really starts to live her life, even if life is what she wants, deep down.