“Is it logical that anybody should be expected to be afraid of the work that they feel they were put on this earth to do?”

“If I were going to have such a short visit on earth, I had to do everything possible to experience it now.”

“Marriage becomes hard work once you have poured the entirety of your life’s expectations for happiness into the hands of one mere person. Keeping that going is hard work.”

“My hypersensitive awareness of time's speed led me to push myself to experience life at a maximum pace. If I were going to have such a short visit on earth, I had to do everything possible to experience it now.”

“I have my own set of survival techniques. I am patient. I know how to pack light. But my one might travel talent is that I can make friends with anybody. I can make friends with the dead. If there isn’t anyone else around to talk to, I could probably make friends with a four-foot-tall pile of sheetrock. That is why I’m not afraid to travel to the most remote places in the world, not if there are human beings there to meet. People asked me before I left, “do you have friends [there]?’ and I would just shake my head no, thinking to myself, But I will.”

“How could two people who were so in love not end up happily ever after? It had to work. Didn’t it?”

“Given that life is so short, do I really want to spend one-ninetieth of my remaining days on earth reading Edward Gibbon?”