How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
Inside these pleasant cottages lamps warmly glowed, and I imagined the families ensconced inside, in the warmth of one another's company, partaking of the normal intercourse of a Tuesday night, Father by the fire, Mother with her young, with no worrisome thoughts of monsters lurking in the dark except in the minds of the most imaginative of their children. The man riding beside me suffered not from the naïve illusions of well-meaning parents who, with calm voice and gentle touch, extinguished the bright, hot embers of a child's fiery imagination. He knew the truth. Yes, my dear child, he would undoubtedly tell a terrified toddler tremulously seeking succor, monsters are real. I happen to have one hanging in my basement. (6.1)
Will Henry is pining for his lost childhood and the loving family that was taken from him at a young age. He envies the families in those pleasant cottages because their lives are warm, caring, and without the knowledge that he's gained in his service for Dr. Warthrop.
Quote #5
"My father was an intensely private man," offered the doctor. "He found human intimacy… distasteful. I was his only child, and I hardly knew him."
"As is too often the case with a man like your father," observed Starr. "His work was everything."
"I always assumed it owed more to the fact that he didn't like me." (6.36-38)
Pellinore Warthrop's idea that his father didn't like him is probably colored by the fact that it felt that way. Still, though, Dr. Starr may be closer to the truth in that the Warthrops can be particularly focused on their work, which leaves little time for cultivating personal relationships.
Quote #6
"How strong is the maternal instinct, Will Henry! Though they tore her shoulders from the sockets and broke the very bones that held it, she did not surrender her child. She held firm. Though they broke her arms and tore off her head, still she held firm. Held firm! Even when she became a cruel imitation of the things that devoured her brood, she held firm! It is a wonder and a marvel." (8.76)
Maternal instinct is a force to be reckoned with, for sure, but the way that Dr. Warthrop is reveling in it borders on the obscene. Sometimes his scientific perspective overrides his ability to see human suffering the same way other people would.