Well, technically, you are a survivor," she'd said. "It can be looked at that way. Anyway, you just put a face on the whole thing for everybody, that's all. Otherwise it's so massive people don't even know how to pray about it, what to ask for."
-- Karen Firth (chapter 1)

Importance: Karen says this to Mark after he returns from New York City, where he happened to be on 9/11. The quote points to the massive sense of tragedy that followed the attacks on that day, and to the efforts of Americans across the country to contextualize that abstract mourning. Because Mark was in New York during the attacks, the residents of Howland can use him as a sort of totem for their grief, even though he was far from the World Trade Center at that time.

You wanted to be changed, but change was very hard, so hard that even one of the major events...
-- Karen Firth (chapter 1)