How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
I can no longer change my environment or even disturb it seriously. They would simply fire and forget me as soon as I tried. They would file me away. That's what will happen to Martha the typist when she finally goes away. She'll be fired and forgotten. She'll be filed away. (2.18)
Those who leave the company or are fired are easily replaced and forgotten. If Slocum is harboring any thoughts about going rogue and upsetting company norms, he had better let them go. His actions wouldn't even cause a dent, and he would quickly be dismissed and forgotten.
Quote #2
It would have passed, sooner or later, just as she has passed already, just as I am passing now. (Fuck her, she's dead.) Her case it closed. If she didn't kill herself, she'd be older than I am now and probably a pest; she would be stout and wrinkled and suffer from constipation, gallstones, menopause disturbances, and bunioned feet, and I more than likely would not wish to see her. Everything passes. (That's what makes it endurable.) (3.43)
Virginia may be dead, but to Slocum, she is not buried. She is very much alive in his mind. Slocum laments that it's the inevitable passing of all things that makes life more bearable and that stamps out any lingering memories that cause internal strife.
Quote #3
I am lacking in sequence for everything but my succession of jobs, love affairs, and fornications; and these are not important; none matters more than any of the others; except that they do give me some sense of a connected past. (4.8)
Slocum's style of storytelling is rather fragmented, and he says here that the actual sequence of events from his past doesn't really matter much. What matters most is that these events happened, and when added together, they constitute his being.