How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
The plaques that explained who they were also told me that the majority of them had murdered their families and sold the bodies to anatomy. It was then that the word anatomy garnered its own edge of horror for me. I did not know what anatomy was. I knew only that anatomy made people kill their children. (2.36)
We fear what we do not understand. This poor kid is terrified of anatomy because he has no idea what it means—he just knows it has a sinister implication in one particular context. When he gets older, he probably realizes that anatomy is just the study of body parts, and laughs at himself.
Quote #2
Then she took down five chipped mugs from a cupboard, and hesitated, looking at the woman.
The woman said, "You're right. Six. The doctor will be here too." Then the woman pursed her lips and made a tchutch! Noise. "They've missed the note," she said. "He wrote it so carefully too, folded it and put it in his breast pocket, and they haven't looked there yet."
"What does it say?" asked Lettie.
"Read it yourself," said the woman. (2. 66-69)
This is one of the first places where we realize that the Hempstock women are weirdly omniscient. They know about the care the opal miner took in writing his suicide note, and can even read it from where they are.
Quote #3
I have dreamed of that song, of the strange words to that simple rhyme-song, and on several occasions I have understood what she was saying, in my dreams. In those dreams I spoke that language too, the first language, and I had dominion over the nature of all that was real. In my dream, it was the tongue of what is, and anything spoken in it becomes real, because nothing said in that language can be a lie. It is the most basic building brick of everything. In my dreams I have used that language to heal the sick and to fly; once I dreamed I kept a perfect little bed-and-breakfast by the seaside, and to everyone who came to stay with me I would say, in that tongue, "Be whole," and they would become whole, not be broken people, not any longer, because I had spoken the language of shaping. (4.78)
The translation here is knowledge is power. He understands an ancient language and gets a vision of his own future in which that language—just understanding the language—allows him to heal people. That's pretty intense.