He’d dragged in Chekhov to tell the class that the writer need not paint a picture of an ideal world, but only describe the actual world, without sermons, without judgment.”
-- Narrator (chapter 1)

Importance: This statement sets the tone for what will happen throughout the rest of the book; that what will be presented are the facts, but that the facts have a way of being skewed depending on who is looking at them.

As always, getting out of class, Swenson feels like an innocent man, sentenced to life, whose jail term has just been commuted. “
-- Ted (chapter 1)

Importance: This statement indicates not only a foreshadowing of the conviction that will happen at the end of the book, but how he feels about teaching in general.

When interviewers used to ask him how he pictured his ideal reader, he said he wrote books for nervous people to take with them on airplanes.”
-- Ted (chapter 5)

Importance: This shows a more...