How we cite our quotes: Chapter.Paragraph
Quote #4
[Amy's] obsessions tended to be fueled by competition: She needed to dazzle men and jealous-ify women: Of course Amy can cook French cuisine and speak fluent Spanish and garden and knit and run marathons and day-trade stocks and fly a plane and look like a runway model doing it. She needed to be Amazing Amy, all the time. Here in Missouri, the women shop at Target, they make diligent, comforting meals, they laugh about how little high school Spanish they remember. Competition doesn't interest them. (7.46)
Amy's competitive instinct kind of makes us want to grab her and shake her and say, "Lady, chill out." It's almost like she deliberately wants other women to not like her so she can gain more attention from men. Or maybe in her eyes, any attention—positive or negative—that puts her in the spotlight is good attention.
Quote #5
I don't think my father's issue was with my mother in particular. He just didn't like women. He thought they were stupid, inconsequential, irritating […] I still remember when Geraldine Ferraro was named the 1984 vice presidential candidate, us all watching it on the news before dinner. My mother, my tiny, sweet mom, put her hand on the back of Go's head and said, Well, I think it's wonderful. And my dad flipped the TV off and said, It's a joke […] Like watching a monkey ride a bike. (9.28)
Wow, Nick wasn't joking around here—his dad really is a chauvinistic creep. Bill's a man with a lot of bad qualities, but the fact that he thinks so little of women under any circumstances is particularly nauseating.
Quote #6
Just then we passed the dark windows of Shoe-Bee-Doo-Be, where my mom had worked for more than half my life. I still remember the thrill of her going to apply for a job at the most wondrous of places—the mall!—leaving one Saturday morning for the job fair in her bright peach pantsuit, a forty-year-old woman looking for work for the first time […] When she announced a week later that she was officially a shoe saleslady, her kids were underwhelmed. (15.102)
The Great Vigilante Mall Search for the Blue Book Boys causes Nick to think back on his mother's first foray into the world outside of being little more than his father's domestic pet. There's something heartbreaking about her excitement about putting on a brand new suit, going to the mall for interviews, and being named a shoe store employee. For Maureen, it's the biggest thing to happen to her in a long time.