I have a longstanding obsession with J.R.R. Tolkien’s 'The Hobbit,' starting with the great 1977 animated film that captured my young imagination. Hobbits are content to be intensely local and ignore the world beyond their neighborhood until Gandalf instills in Bilbo and subsequently Frodo to learn about the wider world. I’ve always seen that as push for all of us to get to know more about the world, and to experience it first-hand. Sometimes academic geography forgets the explorer component of geographic inquiry and discovery; it is these types geographic quotes from the movies and books that I wish to share.