“Everyone can agree that surfing is cool. […] I mean, what else is there? What else is life but a ceaseless ride forward where the best you can hope for is to keep some composure, some control of yourself, express your will in shifting tensions and harmonies with the overpowering, indifferent momentum until you’re knocked off or deposited and the whole experience vanishes, erasing itself behind you as the wave collapses, absorbed back into the formless spirit that gave it rise?” – pg. 105
“The experience you get isn’t always the experience you went looking for. What you were after sometimes turns out not to be the point. But who cares? What matters is the trip you took to get there.” – pg. 126
“Aren’t we all just travelers on a trip where the purpose, if there is one, is mysterious to us?” – pg. 181
“I’m no explorer, just a curious dope on a wide-eyed stumble.” – pg. 199
“Animals are great and all, but what humans get up to – that’s what’s really great to be a part of.” – pg. 241
“But when I scrolled back through my memory, of all the wonders I’d experienced, what mattered more than anything was people. Even strangers had become, in a few hours, more important to me than any wonder I saw, any mountain or ruin. And those were strangers. What about the people I loved? The people I loved the most were all back in the United States. They were hanging out in Los Angeles, drinking in New York, going to bed in Needham, Massachusetts. People are what’s best in the world, I say. People are what’s most interesting, too.” – pg. 295
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