How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
The longer I waited, the more the shame grew and the more impossible it got to admit what I'd done. Guilt grew too, like a disease, like every disease.…I was too scared if I confessed, I'd lose Dad and Noah forever, too cowardly to face it, to fix it, to make it right. (6.86)
Turns out the reason Jude feels so guilty is that she put Noah's application at the bottom of a trash can instead of mailing it. Which…yeah, that's pretty awful.
Quote #8
Even as the police officer told us these unimaginable, world-breaking things, I was still crawling around in the wrongness of what I'd just done. It was caked along with sand in every pore of my body. (6.145)
Jude immediately regrets having sex with Zephyr. It'll remain a source of intense guilt and shame for the next two years.
Quote #9
Zephyr Ravens is not a harbinger of anything at all. He's not bad luck—he's a terminal burnout dimwit loser asshole, offense intended. And what we did didn't cause bad luck either—it caused endless inner-ick and regret and anger and—. (6.168-6.169)
Toward the end of the book, Jude has an epiphany that her sexual experience had no bearing on her mother's death. Thank goodness. Finally, she can let her guilt go. And hopefully find someone who's less of a burnout dimwit loser asshole, too. Hi, Oscar.