How we cite our quotes: (line number)
Quote #1
JERRY: And the zoo is around Sixty-fifth Street; so I've been walking north.
PETER: (Anxious to get back to his reading) Yes; it would seem so.
JERRY: Good old north. (9-11)
The play starts out with Jerry figuring out what direction he's going. "Good old north." Knowing where north is can be comforting; it helps you feel like you know where you are and you know where you're going. Even if it doesn't. When's the last time you used a compass?
Quote #2
We…uh…we publish textbooks. (76)
Textbooks are full of rules and order. Peter works for a company that depends on everything being in its place and telling people where to bubble in the answers. He's a bubble-in-the-answers kind of guy.
Quote #3
What were you trying to do? Make sense out of things? Bring order? The old pigeonhole bit? (108)
Jerry is sneering at Peter for trying to put Jerry in a box. But Jerry cannot be put in a box. He breaks out of cages; he leaps across boundary lines. He is like Houdini the great escape artist, if Houdini somehow got trapped in a play about a bench.
Quote #4
I'm afraid I must tell you I wanted the dog to live so that I could see what our new relationship might come to… Please understand, Peter; that sort of thing is important. You must believe me; it is important. We have to know the effect of our actions. (160)
Jerry's setting down a rule here: we must know the effect of our actions. It's not a rule you can really follow, though: how can you tell what effect your actions have? Jerry wants there to be meaning and order but there isn't. So he poisons dogs. It's not a good plan, really.
Quote #5
JERRY: I suppose you don't quite know what to make of me, eh?
PETER: (A joke) We get all kinds in publishing. (Chuckles) (178-179)
Jerry feels he can't be categorized; Peter responds by saying that Jerry is unusual in a familiar, categorizable way. Even uncategorizability can be categorized in Peter's world.
Quote #6
After all, stop, stop, hee, hee, hee, after all, the parakeets will be getting dinner ready soon. Hee, hee. And the cats are setting the table. (193)
This is Peter's great moment of spiritual release. Jerry tickles him, and he has a goofy little fantasy about parakeets setting the table and things going mildly and pleasantly out of rule and order. Awww. (And then everything goes to rat poison, of course.)
Quote #7
Yes, that was very funny, Peter. I wouldn't have expected it. (200)
Jerry is acknowledging that Peter has broken out of his box—or is he being mean and patronizing and sneering at him for being such a fuddy-duddy? Probably both.
Quote #8
I can't move over any more, and stop hitting me. What's the matter with you? (209)
Jerry is being illogical and pushing Peter off of his ordered bench. What's wrong with him is that he doesn't abide by the rules—and also that he's a jerk.
Quote #9
Besides, I see no reason why I should give up this bench. I sit on this bench almost every Sunday afternoon, in good weather. It's secluded here; there's never anyone sitting here, so I have it all to myself. (217)
Peter does the same thing almost every week; his life fits into a benchy groove. He sees that as giving him rights; the bench is his because that's the way he's organized his life. Jerry doesn't buy it, though.