IMPORTANT QUOTATIONS - QUOTES AND ANALYSIS

1. There was the human body, which was so clearly designed to want babies--and then there was the human mind, which was so confused about the matter. Sometimes the mind didn't want babies, but sometimes the mind was so perverse that it made other people have babies they knew they didn't want. Pg. 23.

Dr. Larch wonders about the ambiguity of human behavior when it comes to children. He thinks these lines when he remembers the fear on the faces of the foster family that made Homer cry when he came to take Homer from them.

2. Shit or get off the pot. Pg. 59.

Miss Eames to a young Dr. Larch after he hesitated in replying to her request for an abortion.

3. How I resent fatherhood! The feelings it gives one: they completely ruin one's objectivity, they wreck one's sense of fair play...Damn the confusion of feeling like a father! Loving someone as a parent can produce a cloud that conceals from one's vision what correct behavior is. Pg. 116.

Larch writes in A Brief History of St. Cloud's in regards to Homer's adult suggestion that he tell the other orphans that Fuzzy Stone had been adopted rather than that he had died. Larch was proud that Homer had made such an adult, protective suggestion, but upset that he was capable of it at such a young age.

4. You can call it a fetus, or an embryo, or the products of conception, thought Homer Wells, but whatever you call it, it's alive. And whatever you do to it, Homer thought--and whatever you call what you do--you're killing it Pg. 169.

Homer's comes to this conclusion while autopsying an unborn fetus that died in its mother's whom after being stabbed.

5. Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. Pg. 79 and others.

Homer, quoting the opening passage of David Copperfield, this was Homer's personal litany or petition, he thought of it often for comfort.

6. Whatever there was that glimmered of wrong, that shone of mistake--of loss, of hope abandoned, of the grim choices that were possible Melony had an eye expertly trained to see this, and more. Pg. 166.

Melony, watching the women leave the orphanage. She saw that the women who left appeared to walk more heavily than when they came.

7. I have stood aside to see the phantoms of those days go by me. They are going, and I resume the journey of my story. Pg. 293.

Homer, quoting from David Copperfield. Homer has just learned that the condom he was given purposefully had a hole put in it. He can't help but connect the broken condom with its products, the orphans of St. Cloud's. He says these words in the hopes that he can make himself believe they are true, that St. Cloud's is behind him.

8. I must part with you for my whole life. I must begin a new existence amongst strange faces and strange scenes. Pg. 309.

Melony, reading from Jane Eyre. Melony has just read to the other pickers a passage where Jane is wishing her love would come. She thinks of Homer and cries. Later, she reads this passage and realizes that she may never find Homer, and she must forget about him. She never picks up Jane Eyre again.

9. To orphans, not every truth is wanted. Pg. 389.

Homer's rationalizes that sometimes it is better to lie. He thinks this after he convinces Candy to have their baby and says they can say they adopted the baby. He would not have blamed Nurses Angela and Edna if they had lied about remembering his mother.