How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
In one of those restaurants before I was born my brother got under the table and slid his hands up and down the waitress's legs while she was bringing the food; it was during the war and she had on shiny orange rayon stockings, he'd never seen them before, my mother didn't wear them. A different year there we ran through the snow across the sidewalk in our bare feet because we had no shoes, they'd worn out during the summer. In the car that time we sat with our feet wrapped in blankets, pretending we were wounded. My brother said the Germans shot our feet off. (1.3)
World War II is referenced repeatedly throughout the novel. It seems to have quite an impact on the imaginations of the narrator and her older brother.
Quote #2
Anna was right, I had a good childhood; it was in the middle of the war, flecked grey newsreels I never saw, bombs and concentration camps, the leaders roaring at the crowds from inside their uniforms, pain and useless death, flags rippling in time to the anthems. But I didn't know about that till later, when my brother found out and told me. At the time it felt like peace. (2.9)
The narrator remembers having only the faintest awareness of World War II while she was growing up, even though it was going on at that time. However, as in the narrative, knowledge of the war's horrors ended up seeping in and having a significant presence and force in her thoughts.
Quote #3
It was my brother who made up these moral distinctions, at some point he became obsessed with them, he must have picked them up from the war. There had to be a good kind and a bad kind of everything. (4.33)
Apparently the narrator's brother was pretty into the twin concepts of good and evil, which the narrator attributes to his knowledge about, and preoccupation with, the war.