In our particular reenactment of this relationship, it was not me, but my father who was to plummet from the sky.
-- Alison Bechdel (Chapter 1 paragraph n/a)

Importance: Bechdel compares her relationship with her father to Icarus, who upon refusing to listen to his father’s advice, flies too close to the sun and falls from the sky. Bechdel explains that in her case, it is her father who falls from the sky. In comparing her father to Icarus, Bechdel sets the stage for her memoir in which her father will fall from the sky. But the sky from which her father falls will not be literal, but figurative.

I grew to resent the way my father treated his furniture like children, and his children like furniture.
-- Alison Bechdel (Chapter 1 paragraph n/a)

Importance: As Bechdel grows up, and as her father continues to work on their Pennsylvania house, he always has his kids help him out. Bechdel comes to feel as if her...