“The first thing I do every morning is go online to check the surf. If the waves are good, I'll go surf. The beach is 10 minutes away.”

“You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.”

“Heidegger surf-boards along on the electronic wave as triumphantly as Descartes rode the mechanical wave.”

“She walked on, comforted by the surf, by the one perpetual moment of beach-time, the now-and-always of it.”

“Life comes at us in waves. We can't predict or control those waves, but we can learn to surf”

“If pinpointing God's presence were really that simple, then he supposed the beaches would be more crowded in the mornings. They would be filled with people on their own quests, instead of people jogging or walking their dogs or fishing in the surf.”

“Here we go, surfing the Net again, something done by humans and very gullible fish.”

“Tell God not to go away. I'll be back in a minute.”

“During Navy Seal training the students are all broken down into boat crews. Each crew is seven students — three on each side of a small rubber boat and one coxswain to help guide the dingy. Every day your boat crew forms up on the beach and is instructed to get through the surf zone and paddle several miles down the coast. In the winter, the surf off San Diego can get to be 8 to 10 feet high and it is exceedingly difficult to paddle through the plunging surf unless everyone digs in. Every paddle must be synchronized to the stroke count of the coxswain. Everyone must exert equal effort or the boat will turn against the wave and be unceremoniously dumped back on the beach. For the boat to make it to its destination, everyone must paddle. You can’t change the world alone — you will need some help — and to truly get from your starting point to your destination takes friends, colleagues, the goodwill of strangers and a strong coxswain to guide you. If you want to change the world, find someone to help you paddle.”

“There's no place you can go on the prairie that you don't hear the white noise of the wind, steady and rough as surf curling along a non-existant shore.”