“The car doesn’t so much drive as float above the road, like we’re making our way to Sydney in a hovercraft.”

“So…while we’re sitting here on this luxury yacht enjoying our bread and water, why doesn’t someone tell me the plan?”

“...once I realized that Australia’s top highway speed of 110 kilometers per hour was the same as going 65 in the U.S., all my hardened American enthusiasm for speed went limp until it felt like the car was hardly moving at all. Even worse, most stretches of the highway are restricted to 60 kilometers per hour, which is how fast Americans go when we’re, like, passing a stopped school bus disembarking small children, or driving through a herd of puppies in the road.”

“When some smart ass asks you if you’re driving, you say, 'Nope, just kicking the tires.’ You have to make sure you actually kick them all on your way around to the passenger side. Otherwise it’s like lying.”

“. I’ve watched about a dozen tourists almost get hit by cars since I’ve been here. I barely made it to the beach alive the other day. I mean, no one knows what they’re doing. They swing their heads back and forth like they’re mounted on a door hinge, but they don’t even know what they’re looking for, not really. Cars just come at you from all sorts of unnecessary directions here, and we’re all probably going to get killed.”

“Because trying to think of how to ask a woman you’ve known for exactly two days if she’d be willing to get into a car with you and take a road trip across the country was something I hadn’t quite worked up to yet.”

“For the first time, there’s no barrier between us and we make eye contact. All of a sudden, I feel like the character in Raiders of the Lost Ark—the one who watches in horror as the wispy, beautiful angels floating from the Ark of the Covenant morph into howling, homicidal demons. You know, right before he melts like a cheap candle.”