How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
He does not know what is happening to him when this does. He does not know what is happening to him now. He wants to be like other boys he thinks, mistakenly, we want him to be like. He thinks he is not now the person anyone wants him to be. We don't want him to be like everybody else. We want him to be like we want him to be (but we haven't spelled that out yet even to ourselves. So how could he know?). We want him to be different, and superior. (But we also want him to be not much different. Frankly, I don't know what I want him to be—except no trouble.) (5.77)
Slocum has no idea what to do with Derek, and feels he cannot guide his own son. If this is how he thinks of Derek, then he has no idea how Derek thinks of him.
Quote #8
Who am I? I think I'm beginning to find out. I am a stick: I am a broken waterlogged branch floating with my own crowd in this one nation of ours, indivisible (unfortunately), under God, with liberty and justice for all who are speedy enough to seize them first and hog them away from the rest. (5.128)
Slocum feels he is nothing more than a singular atom floating around and bobbing from one abstraction to another. Is there a purpose to his life? Will he ever discover it?
Quote #9
I have had to stand still for the longest time now, it seems, for nearly all of my life. Nearly every time I search back I come upon myself standing still inside some memory, sculpted there, or lying flattened as though by strokes from the brush of an illustrator or in transparent blue or purple chemical stains on the glass slide of a microscope or on the single frame of a strip of colored motion picture film. (6.144)
Slocum feels he has had to stand still all of his life. He also fears that he will still be standing still even after he has been moved one giant step forward into Kagle's position. Or is that even a giant step forward? A giant step forward to what?