I don’t know why they even come to Fun Night, because they have even less of a chance of dancing with a girl than I do.
-- Tommy (chapter 1)

Importance: This is important to the story because this shows that the whole main character crew were all outcasts and the “losers” of the school. It sets up the conflict of the story because Tommy believes that he isn’t good enough to ask the girl of his dreams to dance. But by the end of the novel Tommy realizes that he is good enough to ask Sara to dance and he was the only one standing in the way of his happiness.

Rush in fools do.
-- Yoda/Dwight (chapter 1)

Importance: This is the first bit of advice that Tommy ever gets from Yoda, it turns out that the girl he was going to ask to dance was already with someone and he would have been looking like...