Amongst all the little quotes at the beginning of each chapter, all of them have one thing in common; they are all either poems or written by poets or someone in the artistic world from plenty of different time periods. They could mean a plethora of different things, since we will never know the author's true intent of those little excerpts, but I believe they are a sort of foreshadowing device or something similar. For example, chapter one's excerpt is about a bird flying above someone and they can only see the shadow of that bird, “And all I saw on the sunny ground, The flying shadow of an unseen bird” (7). Avis could be that bird, flying above everybody so high that they can only see her shadow. She may be unseen, but others can still see her shadow and follow her influence if you look hard enough, “Avis Dobell, sitting in the shadowed corner of the presidents parlor that night” (13). You have to look hard enough to find the true meaning in any work, real or not. If you just take one glance around the room, you’ll miss the true wonder in the shadows and you won’t get to explore the possibilities that lie within.