Steady Boy didn't have a year. Steady Boy had cancer, that's what he had.
-- Narrator (A Strictly Factual Account of the Day of His Diagnosis)

Importance: At the start of the novel, Charlie tries to dispel his long list of failures. He decides that because he has cancer, he does not have time to meditate upon his past mistakes. This moment establishes Charlie's relationship with the past, while illustrating his hopes of accomplishing something before his death. These lines also begin to define Jake's narrative voice as he attempts to inhabit his father's consciousness and point of view.

Bowing out could only mean a break with reality, opening a trapdoor in the stage somewhere and laughing, laughing while falling down a chute, into a fiction.
-- Narrator (A Strictly Factual Account of the Day of His Diagnosis)

Importance: While listening to the telephone ring, Charlie has a moment of clarity. He thinks that the person on the other line is someone from his doctor's office. Therefore, his mind shifts into meditations on life and death...