How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
Three in the morning, thought Charles Halloway, seated on the edge of his bed. Why did the train come at that hour?
For, he thought, it's a special hour. Women never wake then, do they? They sleep the sleep of babes and children. But men in middle age? They know that hour well. […] Doctors say the body's at low tide then. The soul is out. The blood moves slow. You're the nearest to dead you'll ever be save dying. (14.11-14.12)
The carnival train arrives at an hour when middle-aged men are most susceptible to its attractions. Be sure to check out the full passage to get your brain pondering the significance of 3 am.
Quote #5
Oh, what strange wonderful clocks women are. They nest in Time. They make the flesh that holds fast and binds eternity. They live inside the gift, know power, accept, and need not mention it. Why speak of Time when you are Time, and shape the universal moments, as they pass, into warmth and action? How men envy and often hate these warm clocks, these wives, who know they will live forever. (14.20)
Women are Time because of their ability to reproduce. This might explain why Miss Foley was so attracted to the carnival – she has no children.
Quote #6
They prowled on but found no mysterious midnight spheres of evil gas tied by mysterious Oriental knots to daggers plunged in dark earth, no maniac ticket takers bent on terrible revenges. The calliope by the ticket booth neither screamed deaths nor hummed idiot songs to itself. (15.20)
In the light of day there is no real evidence of the evil and horror the boys witnessed during the night. Again we see the power that time holds in shaping the reality of any given moment.