This book is about more than Freddie gray’s death and its aftermath. This book is about more than Baltimore. It’s about privilege, history, entitlement, greed, and pain. And complicity. Mine. All of ours.
-- Wes Moore (Prologue)

Importance: This quotation is form the book's prologue section. These statements help to preface the structure and function of the book, which uses its examinations of Baltimore to highlight America's ubiquitous, systemic problems. Moreover, these lines urge the reader to consider their own complicity in perpetuating these problems, and consider ways in which they can resist the status quo.

…these were the kids whose mothers were molested by police officers…Whose father were humiliatingly stopped and frisked for no reason. These were the kids who were next in line to be debased and devalued, winding up behind bars or in the ground.
-- Narration (chapter 1)

Importance: These lines of narration help to explain the anger and frustration that man young...