This Boys Life: Quotes

Question 1

Foreshadowing quotes.

Answer 1

“Oh Toby, he’s lost his brakes.” - Fortune: page 3

“They were already dying. The change from salt to fresh water had turned their flesh rotten.” - Uncool: page 62

“I braced myself for the next curve.” - A Whole New Deal: page 76

“I remember the glint of the liquor at the corner of his mouth.” - Citizenship in the School: page 196

Question 2

Quotes showing misfortune/failure.

Answer 2

“Our car boiled over again” - Fortune: page 3

“At night we slept in boggy rooms where headlight beams crawled up and down the walls.” - Fortune: page 4

“We went too late - months too late.”- Fortune: page 5

“Our room was in a converted attic.” - Uncool: page 31

“It was the most scabrous eyesore in West Seattle.” - Uncool: page 47

“He fired his ten rounds in rapid succession, hardly pausing for breath, and got a rotten score. A couple of his shots hadn’t even hit the paper.” - Uncool: page 60

“But our failure was ordained.” - Citizenship in the Home: page 93

Question 3

Quotes about optimism/determination.

Answer 3

“We were going to change our luck.” - Fortune: page 3

“She was going to make up for lost time, and I was going to help her.” - Fortune: page 5

“This was it, this was the last time. We were getting out of here.” - Citizenship in the School: page 195

“Our voices were strong. It was a good night to sing and we sang for all we were worth, as if we’d been saved.” - Amen: page 243

“We were ourselves again - restless, scheming, poised for flight” - The Amen Corner: page 221

Question 4

Quotes showing Rosemary’s personality.

Answer 4

“My mother asked whether someone had gone to report the accident.” - Fortune: page 3

“For the rest of the day she kept looking at me, touching me, brushing back my hair.” - Fortune: page 3

“She had lied about her typing speed in order to get work” - Fortune: page 14

“She helped us picture the house after we had made these repairs.” - Uncool: page 48

“She made the world seem friendly.” - Citizenship in the Home: page 82

“My mother did no expect to find people dull and mean; she assumed the would be likeable and interesting.” - Citizenship in the Home: page 82

“My mother did well at matches. She loved to win. Winning made her jaunty and bright” - Citizenship in the Home: page 109

“But she may also have dreamed of flight and freedom - unencumbered, solitary freedom, freedom even from me. Like anyone else, she must have wanted different things at the same time. The human heart is a dark forest.” - Citizenship in the Home: page 119

Question 5

Quotes showing Toby’s personality.

Answer 5

“I saw that the time was right to make a play for souvenirs.” - Fortune: page 3

“Before long it lost its power to hurt me.” - Citizenship in the Home: page 83

“I wanted it to be with girl i loved.” - Citizenship in the School: page 157

“I only ever wanted what I couldn’t have.” - Citizenship in the School: page 159

Question 6

Quotes about identity/reputation.

Answer 6

“I wanted to call myself Jack, after Jack London. I believed that having his name would charge me with some of the strength and competence inherent in the idea of him.” - Fortune: page 7

“All my images of myself as i wished to be were images of myself armed.” - Fortune: page 22

“I did not know who i was, any image of myself, no matter how grotesque, had power over me.” - Fortune: page 22

“I could be different. I could introduce myself as a scholar-athlete, a boy of dignity and consequence, and without any reason to doubt me people would believe i was that boy, and thus allow me to be that boy.” - A Whole New Deal: page 74

“I wanted distinction and the respectable forms of it seemed to be eluding me. If I couldn’t have it as a citizen I would have it as an outlaw.” - Citizenship in the School: page 155

“To seek status seemed the most natural thing in the world to me.” - Citizenship in the School: page 175

“It was good to find myself in the clear life of uniforms and ranks and weapons.” - Amen: page 241

Question 7

Quotes about guilt.

Answer 7

“Practice is over” - Fortune: page 9

“I was subject to fits of feeling myself unworthy, somehow deeply at fault.” - Fortune: page 9

“Alone, she might have bolted anyway. With me to take care of she thought she couldn’t.” - Citizenship in the School: page 174

“I could feel it hurt him.” - Citizenship in the School: page 187

“The house was small, ash grey and decrepit.” - The Amen Corner: page 205

“I didn’t need to see the tears in Mr Welch’s eyes to know that I had brought shame on myself” - The Amen Corner: page 206

“All i wanted was to get away.” - The Amen Corner: page 207

“She had never been so far away” - The Amen Corner: page 209

“Conscious of the falseness of my position. I had known someone was in trouble and had done nothing.” - Amen: page 240

Question 8

Quotes about transformation.

Answer 8

“I was caught up in my mothers dream of freedom, her dream of transformation.” - Fortune: page 4

“I didn’t come to Utah to be the same boy i’d been before. I had my own dreams if transformation.” - Fortune: page 7

“And at heart i despised the life i led in Seattle.” - A Whole New Deal: page 74

“I was a liar…I couldn’t help but try to introduce new versions of myself as my interests changed, and as other versions failed to persuade.” - Citizenship in the Home: page 110

“I planned to travel alone under an assumed name” - Citizenship in the Home: page 129

“When it asked for my name as I wished it to appear in the school catalogue, I wrote, ‘Tobias Jonathan von Ansell-Wolff III’” - The Amen Corner: page 218

Question 9

Quotes about dreams/imagination/escape.

Answer 9

“Most afternoons i walked around in a trance that habitual solitude induces.” - Fortune: page 10 (wanted to escape)

“I imagined being adopted by different people i saw on the street” - Fortune: page 10 (imagination)

“She was singing to herself. Her colour was high, her movements quick and sure, everything about her flushed with gaiety.” - Fortune: page 25 (escaping)

“I knew we were on our way, even before i saw the suitcases.” - Fortune: page 25

“I dawdled along the route, seizing any chance to delay going home.” - Citizenship in the Home: page 81

“Alone I could lie more freely and I felt more open to chance. Someday I thought, someone would stop for me and say, ‘You’re good as far as Wilton, Connecticut…’” - Citizenship in the Home: page 103

“I was alone where no on could fine me.” - Citizenship in the School: page 161

“She wanted to get out of Chinook.” - Citizenship in the School: page 173

“At first i wanted it for the pain. Then i wanted it for the peace it gave me.” - Citizenship in the School: page 193

Question 9

Quotes about societal conventions.

Answer 9

“Making it clear that he would hold no grudges as long as my mother walked the line.” - Fortune: page 11

“Roy’s strangeness and the strangeness of our life with him had, over the years, become ordinary to me.” - Fortune: page 12

“A weapon was the first condition of self-sufficiency” - Fortune: page 19

“Marian though my mother should get engaged too, and fixed her up.” - Uncool: page 51

“Unlike my mother i was fiercely conventional. I was tempted by the idea of belonging to a conventional family” - A Whole New Deal: page 74

“Chuck and I were ritually abashed.” - The Amen Corner: page 204

“He harried us for their names, but it was plain to me that this was part of the ceremony.” - The Amen Corner: page 204

Question 10

Quotes about masculinity.

Answer 10

“The threats an occasional brutality with which he held her in place.” - Fortune: page 12 (maybe societal conventions)

“I thought Roy was what a man should be.” - Fortune: page 12

“I called him a sissy.” - Citizenship in the Home: page 90

“I kept my feelings secret because i believed shes would find them laughable, even insulting.” - Citizenship in the School: page 158

Question 11

Quotes about guns.

Answer 11

“Just after Easter Roy gave me the Winchester .22 rifle i’d learned to shoot with.” - Fortune: page 19

“I needed that rifle, for the itself and for the way it completed me when i held it.” - Fortune: page 19

“I drew a bead on whoever walked by” - Fortune: page 20

“I had to shoot.” - Fortune: page 21

“Dwights would shoot at anything. He was a poor hunter, restless and unobservant and loud” - Citizenship in the Home: page 142

Question 12

Quotes about being powerful and powerless.

Answer 12

“I sometimes had to bite my lip to keep from laughing in the ecstasy of my power over them, and at their absurd and innocent belief that they were safe.” - Fortune: page 20

“Power can be enjoyed only when it is recognised and feared. Fearlessness in those without power is maddening to those who have it.” - Fortune: page 21

“You’re in for a change mister. You got that? You’re in for a whole nother ball game.” - A Whole New Deal: page 76

“My mother told me she could still change her mind. I understood, didn’t i, that it wasn’t too late?” - Citizenship in the Home: page 87

“Things had gone too far. And somehow it was her telling me it wasn’t too late that made me believe, past all doubt that it was.” - Citizenship in the Home: page 87

Question 13

Quotes showing the adult voice.

Answer 13

“But the man can give no help to the boy, not in this matter nor in those that follow. The boy moves always out of reach.” - Fortune: page 22

“When we are green and still half created” - Amen: page 241 (maybe memorise whole quote)

“I did not know that the world home would forever be filled with this place.” - Amen: page 242

Question 14

Quotes showing Rosemary and Toby’s relationship.

Answer 14

“Only now and then there came a night when she couldn’t do anything but sit and cry, and then i comforted her, but i never knew her reasons.” - Fortune: page 12

“I was glad to be once more on the run and glad that i would have her to myself again.” - Fortune: page 25

“I slept badly that night. I always did when my mother went out, which wasn’t often these days.” - Uncool: page 45

“I rocked her and murmured her. I was practiced at this and happy doing it, not because she was unhappy but because she needed me, and to be needed made me feel capable. Soothing her soothed me.” - Uncool: page 46

“She put her heart into it, hitting every note she knew in the song of my malfeasance.” - Uncool: page 69

“I lived in perpetual dusk. The absence of light became oppressive to me. It took on the weight of other absences i could not admit or even define but still felt sharply, on my own in this new place.” - Citizenship in the Home: page 82

“I was my mother’s son. I could not be anyone else’s” p118

“Why don’t you take a ride with Dwight.” - Citizenship in the Home: page 110

Question 15

Quotes revealing poses.

Answer 15

“She knew i didn’t like her and that i was not the young gentleman i pretended to be.” (Pose) - Uncool: page 32

“She knew i combed my hair differently after i left the house and rearranged my clothes.” - Uncool: page 32

“He was very nice, very considerate.” - Uncool: page 52

“All of it was white.” - Citizenship in the Home: page 86

“It was truth known only to me, but i believed in it more than i believed in the facts arrayed against it.” - Citizenship in the School: page 180

“These were ideas about myself that I had held on to for dear life. Now i gave them voice.” - Citizenship in the School: page 180

“It seemed to me i saw, at last, my own face.” - Citizenship in the School: page 181

“But i knew he was no citizen and he knew i was no outlaw.” - Citizenship in the School: page 184

Question 16

Quotes about belonging.

Answer 16

“I wanted a place in this world. I wanted it with all the feverish, disabling hunger of first love.” - Uncool: page 36

“I liked all these numbers and lists, because they offered the clear possibility of mastery.” - Citizenship in the Home: page 85

Question 17

Quotes about immaturity.

Answer 17

“As we left school we followed girls at a safe distance and offered smart remarks.” - Uncool: page 34

“Come here baby, i’ve git six inches of piping hot flesh just for you.” - Uncool: page 37

Question 18

Quotes about jealousy.

Answer 18

“One look was enough to see that he was everything we were not, his life a progress of satisfactions we had no hope of attaining in any future we could seriously propose for ourselves.” - Uncool: page 38

“Dwight pulled away fast and drove straight back to the house, where he clomped down the hall to his room and closed the door behind him.” - Uncool: page 61

Question 19

Quotes showing Rosemary’s childhood.

Answer 19

“Daddy was a great believer in the rod.” - Uncool: page 48

“She tried to defend her daughter, but her heart was bad and she couldn’t even defend herself.” - Uncool: page 49

“But Daddy left some marks on her.” - Uncool: page 49

Question 20

Quotes about trying to fit in (cool/uncool).

Answer 20

“We had been claimed by un-coolness.” - Uncool: page 36

“We were colourless and mild.” - Uncool: page 50

“We became self-important, cocksure, insane in our arrogance,” - Uncool: page 50

“We smoked cigarettes and combed our hair and exchanged interesting facts not available to the general public about women.” - Uncool: page 63

“But i withheld my friendship, because i was afraid of what it would cost me.” - Citizenship in the Home: page 89

“I was being outfitted not for pleasure but for survival” - The Amen Corner: page 230

Question 21

Quotes showing Dwight’s personality.

Answer 21

Dwight “tried too hard” - Uncool: page 52

“He thinks he’s some kind of big hunter” - Uncool: page 61

“Dwight drove in a sullen reverie.” - A Whole New Deal: page 73

“He had gone out of his way to run over it.” - A Whole New Deal: page 73

“He tried to make this appear effortless but I could see he was surprised and strained by the beaver’s weight” - A Whole New Deal: page 73

“Dwight sawed the wheel back and forth.” - A Whole New Deal: page 75

“I knew hadn’t buried Champion,” - Citizenship in the Home: page 149

Question 22

Quotes showing Toby’s experiences with Dwight.

Answer 22

“Dwight made a study of me” - Citizenship in the Home: page 79

“The trouble with me was.” - Citizenship in the Home: page 79

“Gloves were effeminate.” - Citizenship in the Home: page 79

“My fingers were crazed with cuts and scratches.” - Citizenship in the Home: page 80

“And i played along. Watching myself with revulsion, aghast at my own falsity yet somehow helpless to stop it.” - Citizenship in the Home: page 82

“He would stop at the tavern and drink for a couple of hours, then take me through the turns above the river and tell me some more things that were wrong with me.” - Citizenship in the Home: page 83

“All of Dwight’s complaints against me has the aim of giving me a definition of myself.” - Citizenship in the Home: page 111

“I felt a surge of pride and connection; connection not to him but to Dwight” - Citizenship in the School: page 187

“I could feel his exultation at the blow I’d struck, feel his pride in it, see him smiling down at me with recognition, and pleasure, and something like love.” - Citizenship in the School: page 187 grotesque

“We hated each other.” - Citizenship in the School: page 196

“It disfigured me.” - Citizenship in the School: page 196

“I hear his voice in my own when i speak to my children.” - Citizenship in the School: page 196

Question 23

Quotes showing Toby’s tendency towards being good.

Answer 23

“But i liked be a scout. I was stirred by elevated diction in which we swore our fealty to the chaste chivalric fantasies of lord Baden-Powell.” - Citizenship in the Home: page 84

“But what i liked best about the handbook was its voice, the bluff hail-fellow language by which it tried to make being a good boy seem adventurous, even romantic.” - Citizenship in the Home: page 85

“I yielded easily to the comradely tone, forgetting while i did so that i was not the boy it supposed i was.” - Citizenship in the Home: page 86

“Now I wanted above all, as the only redemption left to me, to be a good sport” - Citizenship in the School: page 193

“It scared me to do so poorly when so much was expected,” - Amen: page 241

Question 24

Quotes revealing reality/lost hope.

Answer 24

“I was bound to accept as my home a place i did not feel at home in, and to take as my father a man who was offended by my existence and would never stop questioning my right to it.” - Citizenship in the Home: page 87

“Starring dazedly down the bright white tunnel of the house.” - Citizenship in the Home: page 93

“Being realistic made me feel bitter. It was a knew feeling, and one I didn’t like, but I saw no way out.” - Citizenship in the School: page 177

“The good life he had in mind for himself was just as conventional as the one I had in mind for myself, though without its epic pretensions. And Chuck still had faith in his, whereas I was losing mine. - The Amen Corner: page 215

Question 25

Quotes showing Toby’s experiences with his father.

Answer 25

“He had the advantage always enjoyed by the inconstant parent, of not being their to be found imperfect.” - Citizenship in the Home: page 101

“Only cry babies groused about their parents. This way of thinking worked pretty well until my first child was born.” - Citizenship in the School: page 101

“But at the same time i felt a shadow.” - Citizenship in the School: page 101 (felt joy but then sad)

“As a boy i found no fault in my father. I made him out of dreams and memories.” (Adult) - Citizenship in the Home: page 102 (shimmers a spotlight on his realisation with his father - cant ask father why he wasn’t there because he is dead now)

“Shoot the bastard.” - Amen: page 239

“I stood in he darkness of the other side, silently hugging the rifle, sweating an shaking in a fever.” - Amen: page 239

“my father had indeed suffered some kind of breakdown.” - Amen: page 239

Question 26

Quotes showing desperation.

Answer 26

“I was ready to do anything to get clear of Dwight.” - Citizenship in the Home: page 110

“I created a nightmare picture of our life in Chinook.” - Citizenship in the Home: page 114

“It seemed to me when I got there that this was where I had been going all along, and where I might redeem myself.” - Amen: page 241

“Someday, I thought, I would just keep going.” - Citizenship in the Home: page 145

Question 27

Quotes showing Rosemary’s struggles with Dwight.

Answer 27

“He pulled his hunting knife out from under the seat and held it to her throat.” - Citizenship in the School: page 174

“If she left him, he said, he would find her and he would kill her.” - Citizenship in the School: page 174

Question 28

Quotes about false realities.

Answer 28

“I read it in a trance, accepting without question its narcotic invitation to believe that I was really no different from the boys whose hustle and pluck it celebrated.” - Citizenship in the Home: page 86

“We would all be together again, as we were meant to be.” - Amen: page 242

“In this world nothing was impossible that i could imagine for myself. In this world the only task was to pick and choose.” - Amen: page 242

“We both believed that the real lie was told by our present unworthy circumstances” - Citizenship in the Home: page 132

Question 29

Quotes before the memoir.

Answer 29

“My first stepfather used to say that what i didn’t know know could fill a book. Well, here it is. - Dedication

“The first duty in life is to assume a pose. What the second is, no one has yet discovered.” - Epigraph

“He who fears corruption fears life.” - Epigraph

Question 30

Quotes showing Toby’s experiences with Chuck and his family.

Answer 30

“Everyone liked Chuck. Sober, he was friendly and calm and openhanded” - The Amen Corner: page 201

“Mr Bolger was studying me.” - The Amen Corner: page 203

“I had no way of explaining my feelings to him, or even to myself. I believed that there was no difference between explanations and excuses, and that excuses were unmanly. So were feelings, especially complicated feelings. I didn’t admit to them. I hardly knew I had them” - The Amen Corner: page 207

Question 31

Quotes showing struggles.

Answer 31

“Happiness is endless happiness, innocent of its own sure passing. Pain is endless pain.” - Citizenship in the School: page 194