How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
"I asked you what your name was." The stranger moved his head and stared at the white wall streaked with shafts of morning light. Then he turned back, his blue eyes leveled at the doctor. "I don't know." "Oh, my God." (1.74-76)
The stranger is the guy we've been following from the beginning of the novel, the anonymous dude who got shot and dumped in the ocean. We haven't learned his name—and this is the big reveal where we find out that he doesn't know his name, either.
The novel doesn't always restrict us to the information anonymous dude (later Jason Bourne) knows. For example, later on we get to see Treadstone doing its Treadstone thing, and we see Carlos plotting with his minions, even though Bourne isn't present at those meetings. But here, at the beginning, we only know what Bourne does, so we discover what he knows—and what he doesn't know—at the same time as he does. (See "Why Should I Care?" for more about how we as readers are placed in the same position as Bourne.)
Quote #2
The day was being born, and so was he. (3.41)
When anonymous dude swims naked to the south of France and pulls himself out of the water, he feels like he's starting a new life. (See also our discussion of "Water.") Oh, and did you notice wordplay here? We don't yet know that anonymous dude's name is "Bourne," so it's easy to miss on a first read-through, but this quote saying that Bourne is "being born" is total foreshadowing: anonymous dude is being born, and the person he'll eventually discover he's being born as is "Bourne."
Quote #3
George P. was a sidestep from Geoffrey R., a man who had been eaten away by a compulsion that had its roots in escape—escape from identity.That was the last thing the patient wanted; he wanted more than his life to know who he was. Or did he? (4.15-16)
Throughout the novel, Bourne wavers between wanting to know who he is and deciding that maybe knowing isn't such a great thing after all. This is in part about how self-knowledge is both fascinating and painful. But it's also about how the novel works. Novels work by both revealing truth and concealing it so that the plot can continue to go on. If everything were revealed all at once, Bourne wouldn't actually have a "life," since the novel would end before it began.