Everyone— black as well as white— thinks it's going to be better over the next jump of land.

He felt like a compass needle. The needle knows nothing about magnetic north; it only knows it must point in a certain direction, like it or not.

I don't want to see it anymore. It's lousy. And it's a cheat. You build it all around something... Set yourself on something... And then you don't want it. Isn't it too bad the great truths are all such lies?

The narrator, a time traveler from 2011, scoffs at the despondency caused by the Cuban Missile Crisis -- especially the drug and alcohol use of a resident of 1962 he supposedly cares about. Then he finds his compassion because he remembers he is the exception in being able to see beyond the immediate -- and foreboding -- horizon.

Sometimes you have to go on when you don't feel like it, and sometimes you're doing good work when if feels like all you're managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position.

The last good time always comes.