"There’s an old saying that you never really know your own language until you study another. It’s the same with race and class."
Dalton says this in the prologue, emphasizing how he learned what it means to be a white, middle-class American: By observing how his friends, all African Americans or Hispanics, behave and how they are treated. Similarly, later in the text he says that white people take their status for granted without thinking about it.
"Too far ahead of his time."
After Dalton's grandfather lost his business, he also lost his "landmark home," thus losing his previous socioeconomic status. However, the family uses the phrase "too far ahead of his time" as an excuse for the downfall of his business, which, therefore, is a form of denial. The phrase shifts the blame on the circumstances and not the business decisions of the grandfather. The family uses the phrase "to forgive [themselves] for being guilty of that ultimate sin in American society: downward mobility."
“Always lock the door. Never open it until you have a) asked who it is, b) looked through the peephole, c) recognized who it is, or d) seen that it’s the police.”
This phrase emphasizes how protective Dalton's mother is. Dalton compares her detailed instructions to computer-like algorithms, which he and his sister memorized by heart. The instructions also imply that Dalton is growing up in a neighborhood stricken with violence and crime, and that his mother thinks that it is likely he will encounter a life-threatening situation.
"I decided I would never be poor when I grew up."
After having spent an entire afternoon cleaning up the neighborhood because he invited a friend over, only to see the area littered again the next day, Dalton feels that it is his neighbor's fault that the projects look messy, and that it is their fault that they are poor. The quote shows that as a child he thought being poor is a choice, and that people could stop being poor if they wanted to, just like they had a choice between littering and putting their garbage in bins. What he did not realize, however, is that the projects "did not receive high priority from the New York City Department of Sanitation," and that the government is also to blame for the run-down state of the neighborhood.
"I can believe what I want to believe."
Dalton is relieved that he does not have to figure out the exact reasons for the trajectory of his life. He calls the freedom to make up stories of cause and effect the privilege of the middle and upper classes in America. He even goes so far as to call the free construction of narratives a 'right.' He contrasts this right and freedom to the causes and effects of lower-class poverty, which is constructed by media and society.
