chuck klosterman is not my favorite essayist, but he knows me best

People who want to travel through time are both (a) unhappy and (b) unwilling to compromise anything about who they are. They would rather change every element of society except themselves.

This is how I feel.

This is also why my long-standing desire to build a time machine is not just hopeless but devoid of merit. It has nothing to do with time. I don't think it ever does (for me, H.G. Wells, Shane Carruth, or anyone else). It takes a flexible mind to imagine how time travel might work, but only an inflexible spirit would actually want to do it. It's the desire of the depressed and lazy.

Chuck Klosterman, Eating the Dinosaur