How we cite our quotes: (Paragraph)
Quote #1
[…] [Julian] appeared pinned to the door frame, waiting like Saint Sebastian for the arrows to begin piercing him. (2)
Maybe dial it back a notch, Julian: taking your mom to the Y is not actually like waiting to be martyred. Although we get that you feel persecuted.
Quote #2
Julian raised his eyes to heaven. (3)
Notice that he's not raising his eyes to the ceiling: he's raising them to heaven. In other words, he's implicitly asking for divine blessing: "Come on, God, do you see what I have to put up with?"
Quote #3
When he got on a bus by himself, he made it a point to sit down beside a Negro, in reparation as it were for his mother's sins. (33)
In Matthew 7:5, there's a fun line about how you should worry about the piece of wood in your own eye before worrying about the speck of dirt in someone else's. In other words—Julian should maybe worry more about his own sins than his mom's.