How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
For a start, she had no dad; he'd bolted back home to America when Lily had been no larger than a plum pip deep inside her mother. She'd never even seen her father. (1.2)
Imagine having a parent who is alive and well on the other side of the world… whom you've never met even once. While Lonnie has a few memories of his dad, Lily feels abandonment and anger toward him for leaving her before she had a chance to know him. Not only that, but she's rejected every opportunity she's been given to find out.
Quote #2
Back then, Stan hadn't noticed how Mum was hurt because they were poking fun at her wedding dress […] He could only see it now, when he was eighty and Mum and Emmy were gone; he could see Mum's stubby fingers folding the dress away, hear her voice saying stiffly, "Well, it's not a nightie." He could even hear her footsteps on the hall linoleum bearing it away. He'd never seen it again. (5.14-15)
We've all been where place Stan is in this passage: remembering something mean we said to another person a long time ago and regretting the immature decision to not think before we spoke. Making fun of his mom's wedding dress was no big deal when he was a kid, but as an adult, Stan's conscience is seared by this moment. It's quite possibly what begins to move him toward wanting to resolve the many conflicts in his family.
Quote #3
[Dr. Finch] was holding Lonnie's essay, ten creased and tumbled sheets on the poetry of Emily Brontë fastened together with the lucky paper clip Lonnie had kept from primary school, from Mrs. Phipson's Grade Four class where he'd won a chocolate car for his project, "What I Want to Be." Lonnie had wanted to be a flying doctor. How sure he'd been of everything back then! (8.7)
Before you start thinking that it's just the old people in this book who look back on the good old days, check out how Lonnie does the exact same thing. Remember that the absence of a male role model has largely caused part of him to remain a child even though he's twenty-two—and the fact that he still uses a lucky paper clip from a contest in school where he won chocolate demonstrates how stuck in the past he still is.