How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Mae sat there frowning, a great potato of a woman with a round, sensible face and calm brown eyes. "It's no use having that dream," she said. "Nothing's going to change."
"You tell me that every day," said Tuck, turning away from her onto his side. "Anyways, I can't help what I dream."
"Maybe not," said Mae. "But, all the same, you should've got used to things by now." (2.5-7)
Tuck and Mae live pretty much the same experiences, but they have two very different takes on it.
Quote #2
"Believe me, Winnie Foster," said Jesse, "it would be terrible for you if you drank any of this water. Just terrible. I can't let you." (5.44)
Is Jesse a little more conscious of his situation at this moment than later in the book? Why is he so insistent that she doesn't drink, when just hour later, he gives her an entire bottle of immortality water?
Quote #3
"After that [when Tuck shot himself and nothing happened] we went sort of crazy," said Jesse, grinning at the memory. "Heck, we was going to live forever. Can you picture what it felt like to find that out?" (7.22)
Of all the Tucks, Jesse seems the least morally changed by the burden (or gift?) of living forever. Heck, he's smiling when he thinks about his dad putting a gun to his heart. Talk about a rosy outlook on life.
Quote #4
"But you see, Winnie Foster, when I told you before I'm a hundred and four years old, I was telling the truth. But I'm really only seventeen. And, so far as I know, I'll stay seventeen till the end of the world." (7.27)
For Jesse, eternal life means being "seventeen till the end of the world." Do you think that's really how things will go down? Or will Jesse eventually mature and feel more his real age—at this point, 104?
Quote #5
Into it all came Winnie, eyes wide, and very much amazed. It was a whole new idea to her that people could live in such disarray, but at the same time she was charmed. It was… comfortable. Climbing behind Mae up the stairs to see the loft, she thought to herself: "Maybe it's because they think they have forever to clean it up." And this was followed by another thought, far more revolutionary: "Maybe they just don't care!" (10.7)
Sure, the whole immortality thing is cool. But not having to clean up? Now that's what we're talking about. Why do you think the Tucks are so messy?
Quote #6
"Life's got to be lived, no matter how long or short. We just go along, like everybody else, one day at a time. Funny—we don't feel no different. Leastways, I don't. Sometimes I forget about what's happened to us, forget it altogether." (10.12)
Mae seems to think that she's not that different from any ol' human. What do you think? Does being immortal make the Tucks inherently different?
Quote #7
"Know what that is, all around us, Winnie?" said Tuck, his voice low. "Life. Moving, growing, changing, never the same two minutes together. This water, you look out at it every morning, and it looks the same, but it ain't. All night long it's been moving, coming in through the stream back there to the west, slipping out through the stream down east here, always quiet, always new, moving on." (12.4)
Tuck's getting pretty deep here, defining life and all. To him, life means moving (like water!)—something he and his family can't very well do.
Quote #8
"It's a wheel, Winnie. Everything's a wheel, turning and turning, never stopping. The frogs is part of it, and the bugs, and the fish, and the wood thrush, too. And people. But never the same ones. Always coming in new, always growing and changing, and always moving on. That's the way it's supposed to be. That's the way it is." (12.6)
Another metaphor! This time, life is a wheel. What do a wheel and water have in common? Yep, they're always moving.
Quote #9
"Living's heavy work, but off to one side, the way we are, it's useless, too. It don't make sense. If I knowed how to climb back on the wheel, I'd do it in a minute. You can't have living without dying. So you can't call it living, what we got. We just are, we just be, like rocks beside the road." (12.10)
"You can't have living without dying." Talk amongst yourselves.
Quote #10
Winnie blocked the picture from her mind, the horror that would prove the secret. Instead, she turned her thoughts to Jesse. When she was seventeen—would she? If it was true, would she? And if she did, would she be sorry afterwards? Tuck had said, "It's something you don't find out how you feel until afterwards." (23.9)
Winnie is definitely keeping her mind open to all sorts of possibilities. But she always comes back to the consequences (smart girl). We don't know about you, but consequences always give us second thoughts.