One summer night I fell asleep, hoping the world would be different when I woke. In the morning, when I opened my eyes, the world was the same.
-- Narration (Aristotle) (Section 1, Chapter 1)

Importance: This is the first line of the novel. It functions to immediately indicate Aristotle's (Ari's) essential situation, one that fuels his actions and choices throughout the narrative: he doesn't want the world, his world, to be as it is - or at least how it seems to be. Over the course of the narrative, his world does indeed change, but not in the way he likely expects / imagines / hopes it will.

I had a rule that it was better to be bored by yourself than to be bored with someone else. I pretty much lived by that rule. Maybe that's why I didn't have any friends.
-- Narration (Aristotle) (Section 1, Chapter 4)

Importance: This quote, which occurs moments after a stranger at the swimming pool (who turns out to...