She was crying for joy, for love, for me, and I wanted to cry for those things too: I was home, I was out of the Scholomance forever, I was alive in a world I’d changed for the better, a world where children wouldn’t have to be thrown into a pit full of knives just for the hope they’d make it out again. It was worth rejoicing. But I couldn’t. The pit was still there, and Orion was down in it.
-- El (Chapter 1)

Importance: When El returns home after four years in the Scholomance, she is reunited with her mother. This quote is important because it shows the different emotions the two women experience during this reunion.

But I’d never imagined that Mum, of all people—who’d never let me see a monster in my own mirror, even when the whole world was trying to convince me...
-- El (Chapter 1)