“When I go down by the sandy shoreI can think of nothing I want moreThan to live by the booming seaAs the seagulls flutter round about meI can run about--when the tide is outWith the wind and the sand and the sea all aboutAnd the seagulls are swirling and diving for fishOh-to live by the sea is my only wish.”

“When the seagulls follow the trawler, it is because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea. ”

“I know the English are terribly sentimental about the sea, but I can live without it.”

“The winds, the sea, and the moving tides are what they are. If there is wonder and beauty and majesty in them, science will discover these qualities... If there is poetry in my book about the sea, it is not because I deliberately put it there, but because no one could write truthfully about the sea and leave out the poetry.”

“When i was a kid we took a trip to the beach, and I just remember being annoyed by the smell of sunscreen, the squawk of seagulls, and the way that the sand would cling on to my wet feet. Then of course, if I tried to wash them off in the ocean, they would just get wetter and the sand would cling more. Talk about a no-win situation.”

“For me, walking in a hard Dakota wind can be like staring at the ocean: humbled before its immensity, I also have a sense of being at home on this planet, my blood so like the sea in chemical composition, my every cell partaking of air. I live about as far from the sea as is possible in North America, yet I walk in a turbulent ocean. Maybe that child was right when he told me that the world is upside-down here, and this is where angels drown.”