,,,our lips skate all over her throat. Her bare wrists, her empty palms. We kiss her like we’ve been starving...She cries through it all.
-- Narrator (narration) ("Appleless")

Importance: These lines describe this story's climactic moment, in which the narrator characters feel a deep, hungering desire towards the unnamed girl, and they forcibly kiss her on her body. This moment could have numerous symbolic meanings, but one of its most immediate interpretations seems to be the dramatization of sexual assault.

They'd been married for years, and he wanted her to give up the last thread of cover so she would stand before him nude and he could make love to her entire skin. Well, of course that made her head fall off.
-- Narration ("The Red Ribbon")

Importance: In this line of narration, Janet considers the old fairytale in which a husband forcibly removes a ribbon from his wife's neck, and her head falls off. Janet interprets this fable...