How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
From a window of an apartment house that upreared its form from amid squat, ignorant stables, there leaned a curious woman. Some laborers, unloading a scow at a dock at the river, paused for a moment and regarded the fight. (1.8)
This is a real Charles Dickens moment. The house is like the people who live in it: skulking and lying to wait.
Quote #2
Eventually they entered into a dark region where, from a careening building, a dozen gruesome doorways gave up loads of babies to the street and the gutter. A wind of early autumn raised yellow dust from cobbles and swirled it against an hundred windows. Long streamers of garments fluttered from fire-escapes. In all unhandy places there were buckets, brooms, rags and bottles. (2.1)
Because the Irish Catholic poor in the novel continue to have babies, they can never make enough money to educate their children or move away from the neighborhoods that keep them down.
Quote #3
The man mumbled with drunken indifference. "Ah, wha' deh hell. W'a's odds? Wha' makes kick?"
"Because he tears 'is clothes, yeh damn fool," cried the woman in supreme wrath. (3.19)
Momma Johnson does not appreciate her husband's apathy about Jimmie's violence—not because she is afraid the little boy will get hurt, but because he always ruins his clothes when he is fighting.