“My restlessness makes me a far better day-to-day traveler than he will ever be. I am infinitely curious and almost infinitely patient with mishaps, discomforts, and minor disasters. So I can go anywhere on the planet—that’s not a problem. The problem is that I just can’t live anywhere on the planet.”

“It makes far better sense to reshape ourselves to fit a finite planet than to attempt to reshape the planet to fit our infinite wants”

“A weird time in which we are alive. We can travel anywhere we want, even to other planets. And for what? To sit day after day, declining in morale and hope.”

“I was just trying to demonstrate to the students of Rowland University that Rowland University was not infinite. It had taken me a long time to figure out what the problem was, but one day I realized that the students at Rowland University thought that Rowland University was infinite. Infinite bookstore. Infinite fraternities and sororities. Infinite sports teams. Infinite snack shop. Infinite Homecoming. Infinite graduation. Infinite prospects.”

“But now my problems had been set loose. They could be anywhere at any time and I was just like everyone else I knew: almost positive that there was something profoundly and undiagnosably wrong with me.”

“I so mixed and matched the planet that you sometimes worried I had no commitments to anything or anywhere, though you were wrong; my commitments were simply far-flung and extremely specific.”