She’s got a right.
-- Faye (Part One, "Revival Road": "Revival Road" & "The Painted Drum")

Importance: Faye says this in steadfast defense of Kendra's ability to date Davan, despite her usual distaste for Kendra. The neutral framing is significant in that implies that love ought not seek to control, a recurrent theme in the novel. Furthermore, it is advice that Krahe ignores, which eventually leads to Kendra's death.

It is all right to feel kinship with your father, to forgive. We all know that. But your mother is held to a standard so exacting that it has no principles. She simply must be to blame.
-- Faye (Part One, "Revival Road": "Revival Road" & "The Painted Drum")

Importance: The role of mothers is a major thematic focus of The Painted Drum, and much of that focus involves the ways in which mothers contribute to and respond to grief. This acknowledgement of the weight of the responsibility placed on the shoulders of mothers elides with the novel's forgiving and charitable approach to the mistakes made...