How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
I lie in bed and words silently tumble out of my mouth. Some people say their prayers at night. I don't. What I say is always the same. My name is Taylor Markham. I live on the Jellicoe Road. (6.54)
Can you imagine growing up in dozens of different places and having to go by a different name every day? If that's what life with Tate was like before she dropped off Taylor on the Jellicoe Road, it's no wonder Taylor looks to her name and location to remind her of her identity.
Quote #2
All I know is that there is something not right. It's in my dreams, it's inside my heart, and without Hannah here, it's an all-consuming feeling of doom. Like something's coming and it's something bad. (10.41)
Whether Taylor knows Hannah's real connection to her or not, she can definitely sense that her absence is directly linked to something deep within her. Since Hannah's gone to be with Tate, Taylor's mother, as she tries to kick drugs, she would be correct.
Quote #3
As I walk back to the school on my own, I realize I'm crying. So I go back to the stories I've read about the five and I try to make sense of their lives because in making sense of theirs, I may understand mine. (12.81)
Ever read a book where you can't help seeing yourself in some of the characters because they're so much like you? That's got to be the feeling Taylor gets reading Hannah's manuscript. Even before she knows the original five are real people, she finds her identity in their story of loss and human connection.
Quote #4
My body becomes a raft and there's this part of me that wants just literally to go with the flow […] But I know sooner or later I will have to get out, that I need to feel the earth beneath my feet, between my toes […] the everything. I need desperately to feel it all, so that when something wonderful happens, the contrast will be so massive that I will bottle the impact and keep it for the rest of my life. (15.4)
This is a pretty poetic description, but we think what Taylor's getting at here is that she needs the pain in her life in order to feel real. Loss, abandonment, and confusion have marked her identity for most of her life. She wants to surround herself with those things, as painful as it might be, so that she can fully taste freedom once she escapes them.
Quote #5
Santangelo turns back around but I catch his eye in the rear-view mirror and he looks away. Once again I get the sense that he knows something more than I do about my own life. I can't imagine what it is but I suspect as the son of a policeman, he comes across all sorts of information. (16.70)
It must be a creepy feeling for Taylor to know that there are people around here who know more about her life than she does. Santangelo, of course, is the prime example—as the son of the officer who investigated both the accident and Webb's disappearance, he has to know Taylor is someone with tons of baggage.
Quote #6
These people have history and I crave history. I crave someone knowing me so well that they can tell what I'm thinking. (16.173)
Taylor "craves history" because she has none of her own. As her relationship with the faction leaders loses its competitive edge, she begins to glimpse her need for connections with others in order to make her own identity more solid.
Quote #7
I grab the photo out of his hand. "What if I told you that from when this photo was taken until I was ten years old I didn't exist? There is no proof of my existence. I didn't even go to school, so no school records, no school friends […] Where's the proof? Where's my birth certificate? Where's my father? Where's Hannah?" (18.106, 108)
Taylor's issues of abuse and abandonment run so deep that she actually has begun to question her own existence. Given the instability of her childhood, we can't blame her. What she really wants isn't just knowledge of her family and where she comes from—it's knowledge that she's real and really matters to someone.
Quote #8
"When we lived here her name was Annie," I tell Griggs. "She used to change it all the time. She said that people were after us and she'd say, 'Your name is Tessa today.' But I'd lie in bed at night and I'd say to myself over and over again, 'My name is Taylor Markham.' I never wanted to be anyone else. She used to say that I named myself. Like she didn't care enough to name me." (22.62)
A giant part of Taylor's insecurity comes from her inability to trust her mother. Their constantly changing circumstances combined with her belief that Tate didn't care enough to name her have made Taylor feel alone and unsure of who she really is.
Quote #9
Later, she fills in the spaces between Hannah's stories and my imaginings. She tells me about the time my father had a dream about me before I was born. How we were sitting in a tree and he asked me my name and I said it was Taylor. (26.94)
Taylor may have spent most of her life believing her mom's story that she "named herself," but hearing about Webb's dream of meeting her changes all that. Really, it wasn't Tate or Taylor who named her—it was her father.