“I was desperately searching for something to make sense; for the world to connect back with me.”

“With a nearly desperate sense of isolation and a growing suspicion that I lived in an alien land, I took to the road in search of places where change did not mean ruin and where time and men and deeds connected.”

“By nature, human beings search for ways to make sense and meaning out of their lives and their world. One way that we make meaning is through the telling of our stories. Stories connect us, teach us, and warn us never to forget.”

“A person desperately searching for love," Merlin said, "reminds me of a fish desperately searching for water.”

“And it now occurred to me that maybe the whole point was, in fact, to lose yourself. But not in the sense of confusion--in the sense of connection to something bigger than yourself...Getting lost to be found.”

“I did things I did not understand for reasons I could not begin to explain just to be in motion, to be trying to do something, change something in a world I wanted desperately to make over but could not imagine for myself.”