The town is outstandingly neat and shady.
-- Narrator ("A Place")

Importance: This quotation is one of the narrator's first descriptions of the town. This quotation is significant in its positive nature, ofr it subverts the overall tone of melancholy, isolation, and despair that dominates the overall narrative.

I am in retirement from love.
-- Narrator ("A Place")

Importance: In terms of theme and subject, this statement appears quite starkly and suddenly towards the beginning of the narrative. This statement alludes to the narrator's own despair regarding his love live. He addresses this despair repeatedly over the course of the piece.

Legislation packs the screw of my intestines. Well, king of the classroom’s king of the hill…Teacher, poet, folded lover—like the politician.
-- Narrator ("Politics" (I))

Importance: The narrator discusses the concept of politics several times in this story, and each time, he uses a highly abstract and poetic mode of prose, as demonstrated above. The narrator appears to use this mode...