The Ocean

“When people who love the ocean come together, they can achieve extraordinary things.”

“Fish are small, but do not drown in the sea. Ships are big, but sink in the ocean.”

“Human evolution, at first, seems extraordinary. How could the process that gave rise to slugs and oak trees and fish produce a creature that can fly to the moon and invent the Internet and cross the ocean in boats?”

“Whales feel cohesion, a sense of community, of loyalty. The distress call of a lone whale is enough to prompt its entire pod to rush to its side- a gesture that lands them nose to nose in the same sand. It's a fatal symphony of echolocation, a siren call to the sympathetic.”

“Paul is with me all of the time. I really do feel that, I particularly feel that every time I go to the ocean, I surf, or I spearfish.”

“I think people had somehow gotten the sense that we have explored everything, when that isn't the case. We so know so little about the ocean, and so much of it is being destroyed.”

“We made part of the record in Miami, and I would go down to the beach, and not 20 feet from the water I see a fish that is at least seven feet long swimming close to the shore. I did not go back in the ocean the entire month.”

“The whole time I pretend I have mental telepathy. And with my mind only, I’ll say — or think? — to the target, 'Don’t do it. Don’t go to that job you hate. Do something you love today. Ride a rollercoaster. Swim in the ocean naked. Go to the airport and get on the next flight to anywhere just for the fun of it. Maybe stop a spinning globe with your finger and then plan a trip to that very spot; even if it’s in the middle of the ocean you can go by boat. Eat some type of ethnic food you’ve never evenheard of. Stop a stranger and ask her to explain her greatest fears and her secret hopes and aspirations in detail and then tell her you care because she is a human being. Sit down on the sidewalk and make pictures with colorful chalk. Close your eyes and try to see the world with your nose—allow smellsto be your vision. Catch up on your sleep. Call an old friend you haven’t seen in years. Roll up your pant legs and walk into the sea. See a foreign film. Feed squirrels. Do anything! Something! Because you start a revolution one decision at a time, with each breath you take. Just don’t go back to thatmiserable place you go every day. Show me it’s possible to be an adult and also be happy. Please. This is a free country. You don’t have to keep doing this if you don’t want to. You can do anything you want. Be anyone you want. That’s what they tell us at school, but if you keep getting on that train and going to the place you hate I’m going to start thinking the people at school are liars like the Nazis who told the Jews they were just being relocated to work factories. Don’t do that to us. Tell us the truth. If adulthood is working some death-camp job you hate for the rest of your life, divorcing your secretly criminal husband, being disappointed in your son, being stressed and miserable, and dating a poser and pretending he’s a hero when he’s really a lousy person and anyone can tell that just by shaking his slimy hand — if it doesn’t get any better, I need to know right now. Just tell me. Spare me from some awful fucking fate. Please.”

“It's either I have to be in the trees or in the ocean, otherwise I lose my mind. I have to get connected with nature, otherwise I don't feel very good. And that's what life's about, feeling good, so nature knows best for me.”

“He that commends me to mine own contentCommends me to the thing I cannot get.I to the world am like a drop of waterThat in the ocean seeks another drop,Who, falling there to find his fellow forth,Unseen, inquisitive, confounds himself:So I, to find a mother and a brother,In quest of them, unhappy, lose myself.”

“I cannot tell you what it is that guides us in this life; but for me, I fell toward the Chairman just as a stone must fall toward the earth. When I cut my lip and met Mr. Tanaka, when my mother died and I was cruelly sold, it was all like a stream that falls over rocky cliffs before it can reach the ocean. Even now that he is gone I have him still, in the richness of my memories.”

“Malibu: With sounds of waves crashing, and the ocean at the doorstep, you feel like you are hours away from civilization. And with L.A. traffic, YOU ARE.”

“She felt like a creature born to reside on the bottom of the ocean floor, dark and flat and half-blind, slowly rising through the icy water to the glittering light above.”

“I love the ocean; growing up around Laguna Beach, I spent my summers surfing, diving, and snorkeling.”

“I was thinking recently, I've always loved the ocean. If I could do it all again, I might do an oceanography degree. You can do ocean archaeology, and I thought that might be fascinating to do - man-made structures, where the sea has risen above the structures.”

“I do a lot of swimming, both in the ocean and in the pool.”

“Man can now fly in the air like a bird, swim under the ocean like a fish, he can burrow into the ground like a mole. Now if only he could walk the earth like a man, this would be paradise.”

“Our life is but a wave in the ocean of consciousness.”

“my mine ,I searching for you ..long time in the trip time walls,searching you in was me..I never felt lonely,this world always singeven at grave heart'sbeing numb to hearyour song is ..What the dealt of this life saidso breathe in wind singingsinking sailing in waves,and breathe out find me..in the rain and riversbut you and me are the ocean,you know ? in long time agothe time in this room make you forget..keep searching time with me and i.put the name your mine to heart of golduntil you coming home,behind the tumble light waiting.”

“The black of the ocean waves was the color of the sorrow in my breast, a sorrow that was never far away and always visible.”