[T]o really try to be informed and literate today is to feel stupid nearly all the time, and to need help.

What I know about auto racing could be inscribed with a dry Magic Marker on the lip of a Coke bottle.

[I]f the writer does his job right, what he basically does is remind the reader of how smart the reader is.

Like most North Americans of his generation, Hal tends to know way less about why he feels certain ways about the objects and pursuits he's devoted to than he does about the objects and pursuits themselves. It's hard to say for sure whether this is even exceptionally bad, this tendency.

It's weird to feel like you miss someone you're not even sure you know.

The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.