How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph.Page)
Quote #4
They had no interest in manufacturing or the type of person-to-person sales he'd spent his life perfecting. None of them had been even vaguely involved in such things. None of them started, as he had, selling actual objects to actual people. Alan looked at their faces. Cayley and her upturned nose. Brad and his caveman brow. Rachel and her tiny lipless mouth. (XVII.30.130)
Alan's never going to fit in with his crew, especially since he sees them as almost a totally different species. The usual generation gap would be bad enough, but Alan has lived in a completely alternate corporate-economic system. His experience is in manufacturing (but that's dead now); theirs is in a technology so intangible there's no point in talking about it. For Alan, true communication is a lost cause.
Quote #5
They were married in a breathless hurry, but Alan felt early on that she was looking though him. Who was he? He sold bicycles. They were mismatched. He was limited. He tried to rise to her level, to broaden his mind and see things as she did, but he was working with crude tools. (XXI.50.175)
It's an understatement to say that Ruby and Alan are mismatched; they're actually on different planes of existence. Alan feels both loneliness and guilt because of this. He's pretty sure that he's ruined Ruby's life and caused her to be an awful person because he couldn't be the kind of man she needed. That's a lot of baggage for Alan to haul through life.
Quote #6
"It is so strange. But it's so quiet that most of the time I love it. The utter lack of social responsibility. You have no familial responsibilities, no real friend responsibilities. I'm lucky to have one guest a month. It's monastic, which is a relief." (XXII.36.183)
Hanne points out the silver lining of Saudi Arabia's bizarre lack of cultural context. She can be utterly self-centered there, worrying only about her existence and pleasure. It's a self-imposed isolation that protects her from the responsibilities of the outside world. We're not sure how Alan feels about such isolation at this moment, but he does choose it over reconnecting with the Western world by the end of the work.