How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
I wish I could be a girl again, with the chance to live my life again. I have suffered so much more than I needed to. And the joys I have felt have not always been joyous. I could have lived differently. (4.28)
This is Oskar's grandmother thinking about her many regrets and wishing for a do-over. Most of what she writes, she writes as lessons for Oskar, and this one seems to be: there are no second chances, so it's important to act and make smart decisions the first—and only—time around.
Quote #5
I read the first chapter of A Brief History of Time when Dad was still alive, and I got incredibly heavy boots about how relatively insignificant life is, and how, compared to the universe and compared to time, it didn't even matter if I existed at all. (5.1)
Stephen Hawking is probably the world's most famous cosmologist. It's exciting to learn about these things, but the larger the universe seems, the smaller we humans seem by comparison. If you're prone to anxiety and obsessing, like Oskar, you can get depressed contemplating your role in the universe.
Quote #6
"What would happen if a plane dropped you in the middle of the Sahara Desert and you picked up a single grain of sand with tweezers and moved it one millimeter?" […] "I guess I would have moved a grain of sand." […] "Which would mean you changed the Sahara." (5.1)
Dad tries to offset the existential despair Oskar is feeling after reading Stephen Hawking by telling him that every little action changes the universe in some way. The only way the universe stays the same is if you don't do anything.