How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
Father noted the skin mottling on the back of his hand. He found himself occasionally asking people to repeat to him what they'd said. [...] Once accustomed to life together after his return from the Arctic, they had slipped into an undemanding companionship in which he felt by-passed by life, like a spectator at an event. (29.2)
This is an important section because it shows not only the changes that happen in a marriage over time, but the feelings in Father as he realizes the world is changing without him. And, whether he realizes it or not, Mother is progressing with this new world while he is not.
Quote #8
Father remembered the baseball at Harvard twenty years before, when the players addressed each other as Mister and played their game avidly, but as sportsmen, in sensible uniforms before audiences of collegians who rarely numbered more than a hundred. He was disturbed by his nostalgia. He'd always thought of himself as progressive. (30. 4)
These are Father's feelings during a baseball game with his son, where the players curse and the game is not so innocent as it was when he was in college. It's at this moment, thinking he's progressive and changing with the time, that he realized instead he's an old man, nostalgic for a time that no longer exists.
Quote #9
The signs of the coming conflagration were everywhere. [...] The painters in Paris were doing portraits with two eyes on one side of the head. A Jewish professor in Zurich had published a paper proving that the universe was curved. None of this escaped Pierpont Morgan. (40.10)
This statement is a little facetious, though coming more from the point of view of J.P. Morgan we're not surprised he would be upset by the paintings of Picasso and the idea of Einstein. Their ideas will transform the 20th century, so it's understandable that Morgan might see them as a sign of not just turmoil, but a world war.