"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."
This quote is taken from Oscar Wilde's play, Lady Windermere's Fan. One of the two protagonists of the story is a kid named Ben whose mother was a librarian before she died. This quote is one of her favorites and also the one quote that bewilders Ben the most as to its meaning. When he asks his mother for clarification, she shrugs but Ben can detect from the look in her eyes that she actually does know exactly what it means. The first appearance of this quote appears within the context of learning that Ben is fascinated by astronomy and that his mother advises him to simply locate the North Star in the sky if he should ever find himself lost. The story is about two lost souls finding their way amidst greater difficulties than most. The quote situates the thematic idea that everyone has problems but some look for solutions.
"He discovered a small blue book, its covers soft and creased with age. On the front, the title was stamped in black letters: WONDERSTRUCK. He flipped through the pages. The book was about the history of museums. On the back it said: Published by the Museum of Natural History, New York, New York."
This quote is a key moment in the narrative. Ben stumbles across this book among his mother's belongings after she has died. Inside the book he finds a handwritten message addressed with love to someone named Danny from someone identified only by the initial M. The book is structured in two parts. One is a text-based narrative and the other is a story about a young girl told entirely through illustrations. Both of the young protagonists are on a search for parentage. Ben believes that this mysterious "Danny" might be his father. This idea will launch his trek which takes him to the museum. The museum will also become the destination in the other narrative. In fact, the museum will become integral to the integration of both storylines into a coherent tale.
"When I took the job here, I thought it would be fun to secretly personalize the Panorama. So I collected things that had belonged to your father, little mementos from his childhood mostly, and I hid them inside buildings all across the model...In a way, this model tells the story of your father's life in New York."
Rose is the other protagonist in the story. She is speaking about the famous Panorama of New York City at the Queens Museum. The Panorama is a massive three-dimensional miniatured version of the city New York originally constructed as part of the 1964 World's Fair. The two narratives take place during two different times periods and this quote is situated in Ben's timeline by which time Rose has aged considerably from young girl in the illustrations which tell her own story. By this point, readers have discovered the link between the two protagonists that unites the two storylines. The book in which the mysterious Danny and "M" first come to Ben's attention is another element uniting him with Rose as is the subject of that book: museums and collections.
