How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
In addition to all this speculation about my future, I realized the following: Mama and this father Matzerath had no ear at all for my protests and decisions, and would neither understand nor in the end respect them (3.40).
Here's Oskar's realization of the great emotional distance between him and his parents. Just as he can be self-absorbed, they're too wrapped up in their own problems.
Quote #5
Fraulein Dr. Hornstetter […] steadfastly maintains that I was too isolated as a child, that I didn't play enough with other children.
Now, as far as other children are concerned, she may not be entirely wrong. […] But every time I shunned books, as scholars sometime do, […] and tried to make contact with the common folk, I ran up against the kids in our building and felt fortunate, after a few brushes with those little cannibals, to return to my reading in one piece (8.1-2).
Two possible stories here. Pick one. A: Oskar's too smart and too busy to stoop to the level of the common bratty kids in his building. B: Oskar fears and avoids other kids because they tease him and beat the crap out of him.
Quote #6
The gap left in the center of the wardrobe was not large, but it was big enough to accommodate an incoming and crouching Oskar. I even managed with some effort to pull the mirrored doors inward and, using the overlapping slat, to jam them with the help of a shawl (12.36).
Hiding in his parents' wardrobe—perfectly safe and cozy, right? It also gives him a place to secretly observe the behavior of his family, kind of like the peephole in his room at the asylum. He does the same thing later in the novel in Dorothea's room.