How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Plenty of kids had single-parent families; [Lily] knew that, just as she knew it wasn't the absence of a father, or even the smallness of their family […] that made them stand out. No, thought Lily irritably, it was the sheer peculiarity of the people in it that made her family not quite right. (1.4)
You know that old saying about the grass on the other side of the fence? This seems to be what's going on here. If Lily could look into the lives of the families she observes on her walk home from school, she'd probably see some pretty peculiar stuff in their houses as well. Part of her problem is that she can't look beyond her own frame of reference—to Lily, her family is the most bizarre bunch of people in the world, and the only one at that.
Quote #2
Jessaline felt her parents knew everything single thing she did before she did it. She felt they could read her mind. (4.15)
One big idea in this book is how young people are limited by the parents' expectations that they'll be just like them. Jessaline is a huge example—she's spent her whole life trying to please her parents, who are both professors and super-academics, and quite frankly, kind of seem like snobs. It's gotten to the point where they're kind of holding her hostage mentally.
Quote #3
Lily had been ten when she'd learned Nan had been brought up in a children's home, and for a long time, she'd kept waking up in the middle of the night, imagining what it might feel like to be all by yourself in the world […] To have no one. It made her own family, with all its faults and peculiarities, its bickerings and squabblings, seem rich by comparison. (5.23)
The cold, hard truth about Nan's past kind of makes Lily rethink that whole bit about her family being freaks. Having a weird family is better than having no one at all. It's a much-needed shift in perspective for Lily.