One minute you want me to grow up; the next minute you want me to behave. What am I to you, a little girl or a sociological problem?
-- Mona (1-8)

Importance: This quote speaks to the tension that Mona feels as she arrives at adolescence, a recurring theme throughout the novel. This uncertainty about how to navigate and define her own maturity is the bulk of her emotional arc, and the contradictions it poses are well-articulated in this quip.

Men don’t know what can happen. They’re happy. But women know everything that can happen. They worry all the time.
-- Mona (1-8)

Importance: The resonances of this quote are powerfully felt as the novel moves forward and the vast majority of the suffering inflicted by Lasher is inflicted on women. Mona points out both male privilege and the ways in which it compounds on female experience and psychology. This observation functions as a bedrock of...