How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
I can't believe I'm on this road again, twisting along past the lake where the white birches are dying, the disease is spreading up from the south, and I notice they now have sea-planes for hire. (1.1)
These opening lines to the novel give us the sense that it's been a looong time since the narrator has been home, given that she "can't believe" she's there.
Quote #2
I thought of them as living in some other time, going about their own concerns closed safe behind a wall as translucent as jello, mammoths frozen in a glacier. All I would have to do was come back when I was ready but I kept putting it off, there would be too many explanations. (1.8)
Apparently this is how the narrator thought of her parents after she left—frozen in time and unable to change. The fact that they've both moved on—her mother is dead and her father is missing (and likely dead)—is a bit traumatizing for her.
Quote #3
When we're back in the car I say as though defending myself, "Those weren't here before." Anna's head swivels round, my voice must sound odd. "Before what?" she says. (1.37-38)
The narrator is feeling defensive here for some reason. The others have been gazing admiringly at a family of stuffed moose dressed up in people-clothes. Perhaps the narrator believes that the others would have expected her to mention these curiosities, and that's why she feels the need to specify that they are new? In any case, Anna's question about "Before what?" is well taken—what is the big reference point (or reference points) for the narrator, in terms of marking her time both in and away from her hometown?
Quote #4
The woman looks at me, inquisitive but not smiling, and the two men still in Elvis Presley haircuts, duck's ass at the back and greased pompadours curving out over their foreheads, stop talking and look at me too; they keep their elbows on the counter. (3.3)
These men who are "still" sporting Elvis hair give the scene a kind of retro feel, adding to the narrator's overall portrayal of the place as decaying and stuck in the past.
Quote #5
It was before I was born but I can remember it as clearly as if I saw it, and perhaps I did see it: I believe that an unborn baby has its eyes open and can look out through the walls of the mother's stomach, like a frog in a jar. (3.34)
Time is apparently so plastic in the narrator's universe that she can remember things that preceded her birth. While literally impossible, this image sets up a strange kind of continuity between the past and her present.
Quote #6
The cedar logs are upright instead of horizontal, upright logs are shorter and easier for one man to handle. Cedar isn't the best wood, it decays quickly. Once my father said "I didn't build it to last forever" and I thought then, Why not? Why didn't you? (4.7)
As we noted with respect to an earlier quote, the narrator seems to struggle with the fact that her parents have not remained frozen in time. This subject comes up again when the narrator is thinking about the construction of the cabin, which apparently wasn't made to last "forever."
Quote #7
Grass is growing up in the path and in front of the gate; the weeds are a month tall. Ordinarily I would spend a few hours pulling them out, but it isn't worth it, we'll be here only two days. (4.23)
She manages to cram a lot of units of time into these couple of sentences, no? From other references, we know she's used the growth of plants in the garden to determine how long her father has been gone. Her weighing of amounts of time and their significance may speak to a larger sense in which she's just trying to sort out time and its movements.
Quote #8
There's no act I can perform except waiting; tomorrow Evans will ship us to the village, and after that we'll travel to the city and the present tense. I've finished what I came for and I don't want to stay here, I want to go back to where there is electricity and distraction. I'm used to it now, filling the time without it is an effort. (6.1)
Here, the narrator suggests that being back home has kind of been like stepping back in time, and only leaving will bring her back into the "present tense." It's worth noting that the tense of the narrative shifts into the past tense soon after this moment—after David decides that they're all going to stay there for a few additional days. Apparently when the characters fail to move back to the present tense, the narration follows suit… for a few chapters, at least.
Quote #9
He was speaking about it as though it was an exercising programme, athletic demonstration, ornamental swimming in a chlorine swimming pool noplace in California. "It wouldn't keep me healthy," I said, "I'd get pregnant." He lifted his eyebrows, incredulous. "You're putting me on," he said, "this is the twentieth century." "No it isn't," I said. "Not here." (18.23-25)
When David tries to convince the narrator to have sex with him, he is shocked when she uses lack of birth control to brush him off. To him, being in the "twentieth century" means being able to have sex without getting pregnant. The narrator sets him straight by reminding him that the place they're staying is hopelessly rooted in the past.
Quote #10
This above all, to refuse to be a victim. Unless I can do that I can do nothing. I have to recant, give up the old belief that I am powerless and because of it nothing I can do will ever hurt anyone. A lie which was always more disastrous than the truth would have been. (27.1)
At the end of the book, the narrator seems committed to moving on from her past, which involves giving up the "old" beliefs that have hindered her and even been "disastrous." Looks like she might finally be willing and able to move into that present tense she has been hankering for.