How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
He could just never see anything coming, and as he lay on the solid, uneven ground with Hassan pressing too hard on his forehead, Colin Singleton's distance from his glasses made him realize the problem: myopia. He was nearsighted. The future lay before him, inevitable but invisible. (5.66)
After he hits his head, Colin begins to think of the past and the future. His memories of the Katherines swirl together, and he wonders what will happen in his life. The fact that he's missing his glasses from the fall gives us a nice little metaphor for his future. He can't see it clearly because all he can see is what's right in front of him. See what we did there?
Quote #5
But now Colin would fill his own hole and make people stand up and take notice of him. He would stay special, use his talent to do something more interesting and important than anagramming and translating Latin. And yes, again the Eureka washed over him, the yes-yes-yes of it. He would use his past—and the Archduke's past, and the whole endless past—to inform the future. (7.7)
Back to the future Colin goes, with the memories of Katherine in one hand and his ideas for his theorem in the other. We'd like to point out that even as Colin tries to makes plans for the future, he stumbles on his past—it's as if he can't escape being a child prodigy and a Katherine-dumpee.
Quote #6
Colin lay down on the dry, orange dirt and let the tall grass swallow him up, making him invisible. The sweat pouring down his face was indistinguishable from his tears. He was finally—finally—crying. He remembered their arms entangled, their stupid little inside jokes, the way he felt when he would come over to her house after school and see her reading through the window. He missed it all. He thought of being with her in college, having the freedom to sleep over whenever they wanted, both of them at Northwestern together. He missed that, too, and it hadn't even happened. He missed his imagined future. (10.26)
Colin finally breaks down here, and it's one of the only moments we see him with any real emotion. He's not running stats or comparing Katherines—nope, he's just sad about what he's lost in getting dumped. It comes as no surprise that the thing he mourns the most isn't having a GF or even a specific Katherine; it's his future. He doesn't know how to cope without his plans and dreams coming true.