How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter)
Quote #1
[Lorraine's mother:] "I heard Berdeen's Funeral Parlor is slipping twenty under the table, so maybe I'll give them a little business when the next one croaks." (6)
Lorraine's mother certainly seems callous about her patients' deaths, referring to them as "croaking," and seeing them as opportunities to get kick-backs from funeral homes. How did she ever end up as a nurse? But maybe she wasn't always this way.
Quote #2
[John:] I think cemeteries are one of the loveliest places to be—if you're not dead, of course. The hills and green grass and flowers are much nicer than what you get what you're alive. Sometimes we go there at midnight and hide behind stones to scare the @#$% out of each other. (7)
Ironically, John feels more at home in cemeteries than in his own home.
Quote #3
[John:] Anybody down there? If I was lying on somebody's grave, whoever it was would be six feet away. Maybe there had been a lot of erosion, and whoever it was was only five feet away…or four. Maybe the tombstone had sunk at the same rate as the erosion, and the body was only a foot away below me—or an inch. Maybe if I put my hand through the grass, I would feel a finger sticking out of the dirt—or a hand. (7)
This is creepy! This quotation shows John's bizarre imagination in full swing.