Anyway, the point is, I just think we flatter ourselves when we say we can engineer our kids to be this way or that way. It’s mostly just hardwired.
-- Laurie Barber (Part 1, Chapter 3, Back to School paragraph 90)

Importance: This quote is significant because it describes Laurie’s opinion of the influence parents actually have on their children. Her unbiased view, before Jacob is accused of murder, is that children are hardwired to be one way or another. The parents have very little control over the way their kids turn out.

Jacob and his friends have a slang term, mindfuck, which describes tormenting someone by misleading him, usually by withholding a crucial fact.
-- Andrew Barber (Part 1, Chapter 4, Mindfuck paragraph 5)

Importance: The idea of the mindfuck is significant to this novel because this novel involves the very technique described by the term.

But something odd happened. After just three or four interviews, Paul and I had the distinct impression we were being stonewalled.
-- Andy Barber (Part 1, Chapter 5, Everybody Knows You Did It paragraph 5)

Importance: As Barber and other...