How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
He's thinking about Merle. How something seems to wait in her eyes. How he felt calm, just standing next to her.
"Well, so it is," he says, smiling with wonder.
He's tired. His journey has been a long one. (1.1.6-8)
Oh, Eric, you have no idea. This guy has travelled across time and space to arrive at Blessed Island, the place he's always fated to wind up at. That's one long journey indeed.
Quote #2
When going on a journey, or arriving in a new place, the easiest way to make friends quickly is to bump the air around you with OneDegree. Maybe no one you know is on the same plane, but someone who knows someone you know is likely to be. Or someone who went to school with a friend of yours. Or who works where you worked ten years ago. And so on and so on. Then you have someone to pass the journey with, at the least, and maybe a new friend for life. And although that's never happened to Eric, in all his years of using OneDegree on so many solitary journeys around the world, he has never failed to find some kind of link among a group of a hundred or more who would otherwise have remained total strangers. (1.1.16)
It's actually sort of ironic that Eric is looking to pass the time on his journeys with people he's "connected" to. On Blessed Island he'll meet people whose connection to him is way deeper and long lasting than any of these other folks he's ever encountered.
Quote #3
He has never been here, yet he feels he has met Merle before, and then, there is that other feeling, that somehow disturbs him even more.
Why, he thinks, do I have the feeling that I have come home? (1.3.39-40)
Yeah, that's sort of a weird feeling. Of course, we know Eric feels this way because he has come home, but Eric just doesn't get it. His journey has finally led him to the one place he's meant to be.