I didn’t want to see a dead thing.
-- Henry ("Proof" )

Importance: This early quote from Henry speaks to the anxiety about death that he feels even before Marie passes on, an anxiety that will plague him throughout the novel. While the other Shaws are moved in other ways by their mother's death, Henry is perhaps the most affected, and his internalization of the grief around his mother's death eventually influences his behavior as an adult. It also lays out, in very simple terms, the universal stakes of grief.

Did that make someone a saint, to pretend that someone who lived in a bad way could still be a good person on the inside?
-- Narrator ("The Remembrance" )

Importance: This quote from the narrator, who is inhabiting Maeve's perspective at the time, speaks to one of the central questions of the novel: what common decency looks like in the face of tragedy. It also helps to characterize Maeve...