“I could only write at the beach, and I kept getting sand in my typewriter.”

“Do I love you? My God, if your love were a grain of sand, mine would be a universe of beaches.”

“Whenever I have endured or accomplished some difficult task -- such as watching television, going out socially or sleeping -- I always look forward to rewarding myself with the small pleasure of getting back to my typewriter and writing something.”

“Writing anything, it sorta starts the way you'd build a castle at the beach. You're just taking your hands and you're mounting up sand.”

“And what about the three-year-old on the beach, in the heather: / "What if I take away the water," sand, rock / "what if I take away the sand, the rock, / the ground, the air, what then, what?"”

“If I thought that what I'm doing when I write is expressing myself, I'd junk the typewriter. Writing is a much more complicated activity that that.”

“I write description in longhand because that's hardest for me and you're closer to the paper when you work by hand, but I use the typewriter for dialogue because people speak like a typewriter works.”

“I'm not one for walking the beaches humming a melody … I love the discipline of sitting in the studio, writing and listening. That is my domain.”

“How pleasant to sit on the beach,
On the beach, on the sand, in the sun,
With ocean galore within reach,
And nothing at all to be done!.”

“Across the narrow beach we flit,
One little sand-piper and I;
And fast I gather, bit by bit.
The scattered driftwood, bleached and dry.”