How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
All of the petals were tinged a dark blue at the center that faded to the softest sky blue in the middle and white at the ends. The edges were ruffled and looked eerily like the African violets her mother painstakingly grew in the kitchen. There must have been twenty of the soft, petal-like strips. Maybe more […] They looked almost like wings. (5.10)
To say that it's jarring for Laurel to notice the similarity between the thing sprouting from her back and actual flowers (like the African violets) is an understatement. Sure Laurel's always been close to nature, but suddenly having something from nature growing on your skin is a whole different story. Though better a flower than eczema, right?
Quote #5
"You don't have a heartbeat, Laurel. You probably don't even have a heart." (10.126)
Way to drop the bomb gently, David. Laurel spends her whole life thinking she's human, and then—bam—it turns out she's not. Add in the fact that the heart has intense metaphorical and emotional associations in Western culture, and yeah, we can see why Laurel's pretty shocked at this bit of news.
Quote #6
"He was right about you being a plant. Maybe he was right about…about you being a faerie."
"How can you even say that where your microscope can hear you, David? […] It might stop working if it realizes its owner is so unscientific." (11.87-88)
David sure is good at studying the natural world through his microscope, but Laurel jokes that it might stop working if it hears that David is so unscientific as to believe in faeries. This is an especially funny statement once you think about the fact that science works precisely because the tools and measurements don't care what you believe in, just what you do. It's that whole empirical research thing, and it's gotten us pretty far in learning about the natural world, thank you very much.