Quotes & Sayings About Time On The Beach

I wonder if all mothers feel like this the moment they realize their daughters are growing up- as if it is impossible to believe that the laundry I once folded for her was doll-sized; as if I can still see her dancing in lazy pirouettes along the lip of the sandbox. Wasn't it yesterday that her hand was only as big as the sand dollar she found on the beach? That same hand, the one that's holding a boy's; wasn't it just holding mine, tugging so that I might stop and see the spiderweb, the milkweed pod, any of a thousand moments she wanted me to freeze? Time is an optical illusion- never quite as solid or strong as we think it is. You would assume that, given everything, I saw this coming. But watching Kate watch this boy, I see I have a thousand things to learn. — Jodi Picoult

Such was the complexity of things. For what happened to her, especially staying with the Ramsays, was to be made to feel violently two opposite things at the same time; that's what you feel, was one; that's what I feel, was the other, and then they fought together in her mind, as now. It is so beautiful, so exciting, this love, that I tremble on the verge of it, and offer, quite out of my own habit, to look for a brooch on a beach; also it is the stupidest, the most barbaric of human passions, and turns a nice young man with a profile like a gem's (Paul's was exquisite) into a bully with a crowbar (he was swaggering, he was insolent) in the Mile End Road. — Virginia Woolf

People are like that here. Strangers smile at you on the beach, come up and offer you a shell, for no reason, lightly, and then go by and leave you alone again. Nothing is demanded of you in payment, no social rite expected, no tie established. It was a gift, freely offered, freely taken, in mutual trust. People smile at you here, like children, sure that you will not rebuff them, that you will smile back. And you do, because you know it will involve nothing. The smile, the act, the relationship is hung in space, in the immediacy and purity of the present; suspended on the still point of here and now; balanced there, on a shaft of air, like a seagull.

The pure relationship, how beautiful it is! How easily it is damaged, or weighed down with irrelevancies - not even irrelevancies, just life itself, the accumulations of life and of time. For the first part of every relationship is pure, whether it be with friend or lover, husband or child. It is pure, simple and unencumbered. — Anne Morrow Lindbergh

12. They had spent a lot of time on the beach, as did everyone for miles around when the sun decided to shine. Theirs was no ordinary beach; it was a gorgeous swathe of golden sand, framed by granite cliffs upon which stood the crumbling walls of an ancient castle. There were caves to explore too, hidden in the cliffs. Children and adults alike would venture deep into them, discovering a dark world that belonged predominantly to birds and sea creatures. — Shani Struthers

It's easier to be healthy in Hawaii than it is, almost anywhere else I've lived. You spend a lot of time outside, in the ocean and on the beach. — Terry O'Quinn

It made me realize how unimaginative I had always been about battered wives. Disaster creeps up, a tidal wave on the tourist beach. By the time you can see it, you are powerless or unable to resist it and it rolls you up and away. — Nicci French

A clock that is moving through space at a very fast speed does not tick at the same rate as a slow-moving watch gently attached to your wrist as you stroll on a tropical beach. The idea of a universal time - a godlike clock that could somehow sit outside our universe and measure, in one go, the movement of everything in it, how its evolution unfolds, how old it is and all that - does not exist. — Christophe Galfard

He was keeping track of time. It was nearly two hours since he had last looked at his watch, but he knew what time it was to within about twenty seconds. It was an old skill, born of many long wakeful nights on active service. When you're waiting for something to happen, you close your body down like a beach house in winter and you let your mind lock onto the steady pace of the passing seconds. It's like suspended animation. It saves energy and it lifts the responsibility for your heartbeat away from your unconscious brain and passes it on to some kind of a hidden clock. Makes a huge black space for thinking in. But it keeps you just awake enough to be reach for whatever you need to be ready for. And it means you always know what time it is. — Lee Child

Overmodulation
By Charlotte M Liebel-Fawls
You're a cavity in my oasis,
You're a porthole in my sea,
You're a stretch of the imagination
every time you look at me.
You're an ocean in my wineglass,
You're a Steinway on the beach,
You're a captivating audience,
an exciting Rembrandt,
A Masterpiece. — Charlotte M. Liebel

As though on a seedling whose blossoms ripen at different times, I had seen in old ladies, on that beach at Balbec, the dried-up seeds and sagging tubers that my girl-friends would become. But, now that it was time for buds to blossom, what did that matter? — Marcel Proust

It is a West zone planet which by an inexplicable and somewhat suspicious freak of topography consists almost entirely of subtropical coastline. By an equally suspicious freak of temporal relastatics, it is nearly always Saturday afternoon just before the beach bars close. No adequate explanation for this has been forthcoming from the dominant life forms on Ursa Minor Beta, who spend most of their time attempting to achieve spiritual enlightenment by running round swimming pools, and inviting Investigation Officials from the Galactic Geo-Temporal Control Board to 'have a nice diurnal anomaly. — Douglas Adams

We spent a lot of time on the beach when I was young so I'd also take pictures of seaweed and crabs. — Graeme Le Saux

On beach holidays, as perhaps in life more generally, the only truly enjoyable time of the day is breakfast. — Michel Houellebecq

Everyone feels hemmed in from time to time, no matter where they live." She laid a hand on his thigh. "When I'm feeling that way, I go to Ireland. Walk along an empty beach. When I do, I think of all the people who have walked there before, and will walk there again. Then it occurs to me that nothing is forever. No matter how bad, or how good, everything passes and moves on to another level." "'All things change; nothing perishes,'" he mumbled. — Nora Roberts

Once in a very blue moon, John Tallow imagined his younger self standing down the timeline of his present life, bare toes curling in teenage beach sand, looking ahead to today and watching his future life collapse in on itself like a dying star. His future life becoming small and dark and dense, its gravity apparently grim and inescapable.
Once in a very blue moon, John Tallow spent some cash on a bottle of vodka and drank it at home within an hour. — Warren Ellis

Yet the laboriously sought musical epiphany rarely compares to the unsought, even unwanted tune whose ambush is violent and sudden: the song the cab driver was tuned to, the song rumbling from the speaker wedged against the fire-escape railing, the song tingling from the transistor on the beach blanket. To locate those songs again can become, with age, something like a religious quest, as suggested by the frequent use of the phrase "Holy Grail" to describe hard-to-find tracks. The collector is haunted by the knowledge that somewhere on the planet an intact chunk of his past still exists, uncorrupted by time or circumstance. — Geoffrey O'Brien

IF anybody had been there to observe the gentle-looking elderly
lady who stood meditatively on the loggia outside her bungalow,
they would have thought she had nothing more on her mind than
deliberation on how to arrange her time that day. An expedition, perhaps, to Castle Cliff; a visit to Jamestown; a nice drive and
lunch at Pelican Point_ or just a quiet morning on the beach.
But the gentle old lady was deliberating quite other matters. She
was in a militant mood. — Agatha Christie

Believing is never a waste of time." Simon looked at me intently his eyes flickering. "Even if you're wrong you could have been right. Take me with my painting I don't know if I'm any good. So maybe I shouldn't try because maybe I'd be setting myself up for disappointment. But it's like you looking for old coins on the beach. Whether you find any or not is for bonus points it's the search that counts. It's the belief that they might be out there. — Amanda Howells

I remember lying on the beach that afternoon, looking at Audrey while trying at the same time not to look because I knew if she caught me she'd turn away. I remember wondering if I had been that way with my own mother once, always distant, always trying to disappear, always dismissing her, she who had held me in her womb and squeezed me out. How ungrateful we all once were, we daughters who become mothers only to learn how it feels, the endless cycle of rejection. I remember thinking about my mother that day, wishing I could tell her how sorry I was. — Laurie Foos

But Amy Pond. Oh! The Sea had briefly been able to touch her mind - it knew that the Doctor was the most important thing in the world to her, and it had given a copy of him to her. If they spent enough time together, the copy would become every bit as good as the real Doctor. It stood there now, wheeling her down to the beach, one hand resting lightly on her shoulders, drawing all it could from her. — James Goss

On one DR trip you drive up to La Vega and put her name out there. You show a picture, too, like a private eye. It is of the two of you, the one time you went to the beach, to Sandy Hook. Both of you are smiling. Both of you blinked. — Junot Diaz

was thinking - um, maybe you should let me do the talking." He glanced over at her. "What are you saying? That I'm scary?" "You're the scariest person I've ever met." "Thank you," he said with a wicked smile. "That's the nicest thing anyone has said to me in a long time." "No, really. You're scarier than Frankenstein." He chuckled. "You're so scary that a great white shark would put on tennis shoes and run up the beach to get away from you." His chuckle turned into a laugh. "I mean it," she said, getting into the spirit of it. "If the boogey man was in your closet, he'd stay there until you left for work." "Okay, okay," he said, holding up one hand while trying to stop laughing. "I got it. When we find the girl, you can do the talking." She nodded thoughtfully. "Yeah, that's probably a good idea. — Arthur Bradley

I can't wait to be that age and hanging out with a bunch of people hanging out all day playing golf and going to the beach, all my own age. We'd be laughing and having a good time and getting loopy on our prescription drugs. Driving golf carts around. I can't wait. — Cameron Diaz

On a whim, I once entered a neighbor's apartment through an open window and left a pink, glittery beach ball sitting on his bed, then left. I could have robbed him, but I just wanted the fun of fucking with him. In months that followed, I snuck into the same apartment time and time again, leaving birdcages, open umbrellas and even watermelons on that same bed. — Boyd Rice

On the other hand, although I have a regular work schedule, I take time to go for long walks on the beach so that I can listen to what is going on inside my head. If my work isn't going well, I lie down in the middle of a workday and gaze at the ceiling while I listen and visualize what goes on in my imagination. — Albert Einstein

In the morning there was a big wind blowing and the waves were running high up on the beach and he was awake a long time before he remembered that his heart was broken. — Ernest Hemingway,

His life had been tied to the past. He'd seen himself a point on a moving wavefront, propagating through sterile history - a known past, a projectable future. But she was the breaking of the wave. Suddenly there was a beach, the unpredictable ... new life. Past and future stopped at the beach: that was how he'd set it out. But he wanted to believe it too, the same way he loved her, past all words - believe that no matter how bad the time, nothing was fixed, everything could be changed and she could always deny the dark sea at his back, love it away. And (selfishly) that from a somber youth, squarely founded on Death - along for Death's ride - he might, with her, find his way to life and to joy. — Thomas Pynchon

Truly landlocked people know they are. Know the occasional Bitter Creek or Powder River that runs through Wyoming; that the large tidy Salt Lake of Utah is all they have of the sea and that they must content themselves with bank, shore, beach because they cannot claim a coast. And having none, seldom dream of flight. But the people living in the Great Lakes region are confused by their place on the country's edge - an edge that is border but not coast. They seem to be able to live a long time believing, as coastal people do, that they are at the frontier where final exit and total escape are the only journeys left. But those five Great Lakes which the St. Lawrence feeds with memories of the sea are themselves landlocked, in spite of the wandering river that connects them to the Atlantic. Once the people of the lake region discover this, the longing to leave becomes acute, and a break from the area, therefore, is necessarily dream-bitten, but necessary nonetheless. — Toni Morrison

Why did you make it so hard for me? I'd rather empty the ocean with a sieve. I do it for you. Or count the grains of sand on every beach. All for you. There are so many people, so many countries. But I have time. All the time in the world. Eternity. — Grant Morrison

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

When I was younger, Jackie Joyner-Kersee was a mentor to me and gave me great advice. The best was to 'work 100 percent, but enjoy every moment along the way.' Sometimes you get so in the zone, you forget to enjoy your passions. I love running - but I also love the movies, relaxing on the beach, shopping and spending time with my friends. Enjoying my life helps me enjoy my running. — Allyson Felix

I remember sitting back, on a local beach I called home; thinking about the wild storms I had already faced, the chaotic thunder I somehow learnt to dance through. This time, remembering it, was different. I had no emotional attachment, I felt free of the past and could quietly seperate who I was with who I am now and this moment was empowering , because had I not faced the greatest disasters with courage, I wouldn't have learnt the mastery of life. My self awakening. — Nikki Rowe

He thought he kept the universe alone;
For all the voice in answer he could wake
Was but the mocking echo of his own
From some tree-hidden cliff across the lake.
Some morning from the boulder-broken beach
He would cry out on life, that what it wants
Is not its own love back in copy speech,
But counter-love, original response.
And nothing ever came of what he cried
Unless it was the embodiment that crashed
In the cliff's talus on the other side,
And then in the far-distant water splashed,
But after a time allowed for it to swim,
Instead of proving human when it neared
And someone else additional to him,
As a great buck it powerfully appeared,
Pushing the crumpled water up ahead,
And landed pouring like a waterfall,
And stumbled through the rocks with horny tread,
And forced the underbrush--and that was all. — Robert Frost

There's not much that doesn't get me stoked. I love what I do and am so passionate about it that I get stoked on the simplest things - watching the sunrise, walking on the beach, going for a run through the forest or along the coast. One of my all time favorite things is surfing amazing waves with my family and best friends. — Sally Fitzgibbons

I didn't go nightclubbing much as a teenager in Bournemouth because my friends and I didn't have the money - but we spent a lot of time on the beach, having barbecues, and running into the sea in the middle of the night. — Amanda Holden

In another place, in another time, she would have felt the majesty of the beauty around her, but as she stood on the beach, she realized that she didn't feel anything at all. In a way, she felt as if she weren't really here, as if the whole thing was nothing but a dream. — Nicholas Sparks

I'm in two modes when I'm on Lanai: In engineering mode, I'm trying to find the right place for the reservoir and the desalination plant, and looking at designs for new hotel rooms. The rest of the time, I'm in decompression mode. I'm on Hulopoe Beach, going for a swim, or on my paddleboard surrounded by 100 spinner dolphins. — Larry Ellison

We walked on the beach, fed blue corn ships to the seagulls, and munched on blue jelly beans, blue saltwater taffy and all the other free samples my mom brought home from work.
I guess I should explain the blue food.
See, Gabe had once told my mom there was no such thing. They had this fight, which seemed like a really small thing at the time. But ever since, my mom went out of her way to eat blue. She baked blue birthday cakes. She mixed blueberry smoothies. She bought blue-corn tortilla chips and brought home blue candy from the shop. — Rick Riordan

I knew that meant we were done and that we'd smooth over the surface I'd just tossed a rock into, but even the waves that crash down on the beach start out as tiny ripples, far out at sea.
They just gain strength over time. — Jessi Kirby

I love feeling in touch with Mother Nature. Spending time outside - whether it's hiking, biking, walking on the beach, or lying in the sun - brings me clarity and energy. — Chelsea Krost

We can't jump off bridges anymore because our iPhones will get ruined. We can't take skinny dips in the ocean because there's no service on the beach and adventures aren't real unless they're on Instagram. Technology has doomed the spontaneity of adventure and we're helping destroy it every time we Google, check-in, and hashtag. — Jeremy Glass

To use Newton's words, our efforts up till this moment have but turned over a pebble or shell here and there on the beach, with only a forlorn hope that under one of them was the gem we were seeking. Now we have the sieve, the minds, the hands, the time, and, particularly, the dedication to find those gems-no matter in which favorite hiding place the children of distant worlds have placed them. — Frank Drake

Tobryton cocked his head as he watched the commotion play put. "Didn't we send you to God out on that beach?" he said to Damon.
"He didn't want me. Next time He'd be happy with socks. — Gary Meehan

There are videos where I would go approaching strangers and sing the songs from 'The Lion King. I would have been about four years, and I came running up to people on the beach, strangers that I chose at random and began to sing, and my family never knew where I was, they were always looking for me, trying to imagine who I was harassing this time . — Taylor Swift

And the time sundials tell
May be minutes and hours. But it may just as well
Be seconds and sparkles, or seasons and flowers.
No, I don't think of time as just minutes and hours.
Time can be heartbeats, or bird songs, or miles,
Or waves on a beach, or ants in their files
(They do move like seconds - just watch their feet go:
Tick-tick-tick, like a clock). You'll learn as you grow
That whatever there is in a garden, the sun
Counts up on its dial. By the time it is done
Our sundial - or someone's - will certainly add
All the good things there are. Yes, and all of the bad.
And if anyone's here for the finish, the sun
Will have told him - by sundial - how well we have done.
How well we have done, or how badly. Alas,
That is a long thought. Let me hope we all pass. — John Ciardi

Honolulu represents the worst of all that. Yet every time I fly in, anticipation begins to build just about the time I think I'll go crazy, stuffed into a narrow airliner seat between honeymooners and retired couples looking for Shangri-La.
I'd like to tell them to hold on tight to that person beside them, because that's where they'll find paradise. It is not a beach or a palm tree grove or the brim of a smoking black crater. It's a plateau inside their hearts, one that can only be reached in tandem. — Ellen Hopkins

We must go home!", said the Snork.
"Not yet!" begged the Snork Maiden. "We haven't had the time to explore the cliff on the other side properly! We haven't even bathed!"
"We can wait a little and see what happens, can't we?" said Moomintroll. "It would be such a pity to go home just when we've discovered this island!"
"But if there's a storm we shan't be able to go at all!" said the Snork, brightly.
"That would be wonderful!" burst out Sniff. "We could stay here for ever and ever."
"Quiet children, I must think," said Moominpappa. He went down to the beach and sniffed the air, turned his head in all directions and wrinkled his forehead. — Tove Jansson

I never want to be apart from you," he said. "I'm going to buy an island and take you there. A ship will come once a month with supplies. The rest of the time it will be just the two of us, wearing leaves and eating exotic fruit and making love on the beach ... "
You'd start a produce export business and organize a local economy within a month," she said flatly.
Harry groaned as he recognized the truth of it. "God. Why do you tolerate me?"
Poppy grinned and slid her arms around his neck. "I like the side benefits," she told him. "And really, it's only fair since you tolerate me. — Lisa Kleypas

He was always doing that these days. Everything he saw became a symbol of his own existence, from a rabbit caught in headlights to raindrops racing down a window-pane. Perhaps it was a sign that he was going to become a poet or a philosopher: the kind of person who, when he stood on the sea-shore, didn't see waves breaking on a beach, but saw the surge of human will or the rhythms of copulation, who didn't hear the sound of the tide but heard the eroding roar of time and the last moaning sigh of humanity fizzing into nothingness. But perhaps it was a sign, he also thought, that he was turning into a pretentious wanker. — Stephen Fry

Don't count on me to take you in because I'm angry. I'm angry at you for leading us on such a song and dance all these years, not just these few years but all the years, skipping all those holidays and staying away from beach trips and missing Mom and Dad's thirtieth anniversary and their thirty-fifth and Jeannie's baby and not attending my wedding that time or even sending a card or calling to wish me well. But most of all Denny, most of all: I will never forgive you for consuming every last little drop of our parents' attention and leaving nothing for the rest of us. — Anne Tyler

The sea was no stranger to the rock on the beach. The sea came often to the rock, rushing up wetly against its warm grey, and always as it swept away it took an infinitesimal part of the rock with it. The rock had known the waves for a long time, and learned it was in its nature to erode. — Chew Chia Shao Wei

Twenty-first-century attitudes towards time and our expectations of story are very different from the shape of Mary Anning's life. She spent day after day, year after year, doing the same thing on the beach. I have taken the events of her life and condensed them to fit into a narrative that is not stretched beyond the reader's patience. Hence events, while in order, do not always coincide exactly with actual dates and time spans. Plus, of course, I made up plenty. For instance, while there was gossip about Mary and Buckland and Mary and Birch, there was no proof. That is where only a novelist can step in. — Tracy Chevalier

It is particularly appropriate that we unveil this campaign on this first day of the annual international coastal clean-up effort, ... Beach cleanups are something each of us can do any time of the year. I'm proud to be participating in the cleanup efforts today and I encourage everyone to make the time for these types of activities. — Ted Danson

I go eat a sandwich for lunch and have a milk shake and miss going to the gym for 10 days, and somebody snaps a picture of me on the beach, and all of a sudden, I've lost it. Why do I need to be perfect all the time? — Eric Dane

There is no such thing as a perfect match. There are only somewhat good and somewhat bad matches. A couple are like two pebbles that are next to each other on a beach. They will have rough edges and rub each other the wrong way initially. But as they spend time together and the waves pound them, the edges rub off and they will seem made for each other. — Farahad Zama

When I arrived at her door, with the weight of the entire world on my shoulders, she drew me into her arms and eased all my stress away. She comforted and spent time with me when she didn't have to. She didn't know me at all, had no idea who I was or what I intended for her, whether passion or pain. But her heart led her forward, that beautiful heart I wanted for myself. So when the moment came to kiss her, as we stood in the water at the beach, I seized it like a desperate man. I was a mad one on the edge of insanity and she was the tonic I needed. — Kenya Wright

The last thing Helen thought before she drifted off after him was that she'd slept on a beach like this before with another boy. But this time there was no Helen-shaped dent for her to fit inside. — Josephine Angelini

After 'Bhaji On The Beach', I didn't make a movie for six years. I couldn't get a movie off the ground for love nor money. It was a very tough time and I almost gave up. If I had been an Oxbridge bloke after 'Bhaji', my career would have been very different — Gurinder Chadha

The beach looked beautiful this time of night. She'd always loved the ocean, spending many of her summers on its sand and in its waters, but she'd never witnessed it like this. Completely night, and completely alone. The waves crashed against the shore, the moon's light shimmering off the currents like glitter, stars speckling the sky above and wind rustling her hair as she took it all in. Sitting here in solitude, it felt as if it existed just for her. The water, the moon, the stars, the wind - all a beautiful masterpiece constructed only for her viewing. — Connie L. Smith

I was supposed to be at the condo, wasting time on the beach, just Dad and me, figuring out college and my life and spending time together. Instead, I was in a new house with new people - including a future stepbrother who'd seen me naked. — Kody Keplinger

One afternoon while driving back from the beach, Hugh pointed out a McDonald's bag vomiting its contents onto the pavement. "I say that any company whose products are found on the ground automatically has to go out of business," he said. This is how we talk nowadays, as if our pronouncements hold actual weight and can be implemented at our discretion, like we're kings or warlocks. "That means no more McDonald's, no more Coke - none of it."
"That wouldn't affect you any,"I told him. Hugh doesn't drink soda or eat Big Macs. "But what if it was something you needed, like paint? I find buckets of it in the woods all the time."
"Fine," he said. "Get rid of it. I'll make my own."
If anyone could make his own paint, it would be Hugh.
"What about brushes?"
"Please," he said, and he shifted into a higher gear. "I could make those in my sleep. — David Sedaris

Lying in his parents' house, in the middle of the night, she told him the whole story, about meeting Dimitri on a bus, finding his resume in the bin. She confessed that Dimitri had gone with her to Palm Beach. One by one he stored the pieces of information in his mind, unwelcome, unforgivable. And for the first time in his life, another man's name upset Gogol more than his own. — Jhumpa Lahiri

Every minute I'm on the set, it's play time for me. I feel like I'm on the beach! — Rachel G. Fox

I don't think most people decide to become an actor because they want to be followed around all the time ... I see it when I'm with my brothers, and I don't get it. I don't understand why someone wants to take a photo of us getting out of a car or on the beach. I think that's really weird. — Luke Hemsworth

Life is like sand on the beach. Each time the waves comes to the edge, it takes a little bit of you". — Abdulazeez Henry Musa

Hallsy is only thirty-nine, and already her face is pulled tight as a pair of Lululemon yoga pants across a plus-size girl's rear. She's never been married, which she'll tell you she never wants to be even though she hangs all over every remotely fuckable guy after a single drink, while they gently untangle her Marshmallow Man arms from around their stiff necks. It's no wonder the only ring on her finger is the Cartier Trinity, what with the way she's ruined her face and the fact that she spends more time sunning on the beach than she should running on a treadmill. But it's not just her sunspot-speckled chest and stocky, lazy frame. Hallsy is the type of person others describe as "whacky" and "kooky," which is just the civilized way of saying she's a nasty cunt. Hallsy she loves me. — Jessica Knoll

I absolutely love any kind of outdoor activities like snowboarding, hiking, surfing, and laying out on the beach if I ever get the time ... which is not often! — Gina Holden

I am convinced that the greatest legacy we can leave our children are happy memories: those precious moments so much like pebbles on the beach that are plucked from the white sand and placed in tiny boxes that lay undisturbed on tall shelves until one day they spill out and time repeats itself, with joy and sweet sadness, in the child now an adult. — Og Mandino

Instead of getting my gold retirement watch and landing on my feet with a white picket fence and a satellite dish, I ended up base-jumping from the kettle into the fire. All because of one last job. But what's done is done. If your interested, you can read about the whole hot mess in The Intern's Handbook. You won't find it at Barnes & Noble, but I hear the feds have a few copies lying around, and I wouldn't be surprised if you could download it for free on Russian iTunes. I'm told it's an excellent beach/airplane/bathroom/killing-time-after-a-motel-tryst read. — Shane Kuhn

I don't have time for lie-on-the-beach vacations. I'm a zoo person. There's one in New Jersey where animals actually come up to your car. I love the monkeys - I used to give them bubblegum to chew. — Missy Elliot

Separate vacations have become more popular among married couples. We don't think this is a good idea. Over time, doing your own thing will cause you to lead separate lives. We are not talking about a three-day trip to Florida with your sister or best friend - if you want to take small trips like this, feel free to. But if you want to take a major vacation - say, to spend two weeks in Europe - your husband should be your travel companion. But suppose your idea of a fun vacation is going to Europe or lying on the beach in the Caribbean, while your husband loves tours of historic sites and museums. Our advice is to figure out a way to do a little of both. One year, you can go to the beach, the next year you can do a tourist package together, or go on a trip with a beach near some sites of cultural interest. Once you start planning separate vacations, you become like roommates, not lovers. — Ellen Fein

Our time on this earth is sacred, and we should celebrate every moment.
The importance of this has been completely forgotten: even religious holidays have been transformed into opportunities to go to the beach or the park or skiing. There are no more rituals. Ordinary actions can no longer be transformed into manifestations of the sacred. We cook and complain that it's a waste of time, when we should be pouring our love into making that food. We work and believe it's a divine curse, when we should be using our skills to bring pleasure and to spread the energy of the Mother. — Paulo Coelho

I think [James] Joyce sometimes enjoyed misleading his readers. He said to me that history was like that parlor game where someone whispers something to the person next to him, who repeats it not very distinctly to the next person, and so on until, by the time the last person hears it, it comes out completely transformed. Of course, as he explained to me, the meaning in Finnegans Wake is obscure because it is a 'nightpiece.' I think, too, that, like the author's sight, the work is often blurred. — Sylvia Beach

You don't deal with anything, Savitar. You sit out here in the sun, catching waves, spewing bullshit philosophy you don't follow. (Acheron)
You're right. I gave up trying to affect my destiny a long time ago. But that's because every time I tried to change the future, I fucked it up worse. Eventually the rat gets tired of pulling the lever and sits down in his corner to lick his wounds. So if you're ready to hang it up, come sit on the beach with me. (Savitar) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Cabel felt the familiar nostalgic excitement of the endless possibilities encapsulated in a summers' night at Silver Beach. He smiled at himself as a boy and, more ruefully, at the man who now stood on the worn planks of the boardwalk. This night held no possibilities for him, though it was pleasant to remember a time when it did. — Erin Farwell

I've been thinking about what this would be like, too. Ever since that night I almost kissed you on the beach back in June. Say you're right. Say I can have any woman I want. The woman I want is you. Because you're perky and fun. Because you're adorable and you make me laugh all the time. And because you're far more beautiful than you give yourself credit for. I want you, Trina. You've got adaptability and smarts that can't be measured by essays and bubbled answer sheets. I don't want a distraction. I don't want a random hook-up. I want you. — Christi Barth

Have you ever walked along a beach? You walk towards something in the distance. For the longest while it never seems to get any closer even though you are walking and walking. Then all of a sudden, you are there. You've arrived at last. That's what grief is like. Meanwhile we are running with you in the spray of the surf at the edge of the shore where the sand meets the sea. We are cheering you on. — Kate McGahan

You think God created the world?" he asks me. "Bullshit. Any kind of benevolent and righteous being would never create a fucking world like this. It's impossible. God didn't fucking create the world."
Before he walks away completely, he turns back to me one final time, pointing his finger at me. Some people on the beach look over.
"Henry," he says, "the Devil created the world when God wasn't looking"
He kicks down the little kids' sand castle and goes somewhere with the girls. — Drew Lerman

If he was a ghost in the life he remembered, Jeff thought, he was also a ghost in his present life, just the same way. Except, in all the fourteen years, just a couple of times. With Melody that first summer he had felt alive. On the beach on the island. And when he played the guitar. Most of the time, he thought, he practiced not being anybody. If you weren't anybody then nobody could - what? Hurt you or leave you behind? Make you unhappy? But then they couldn't make you happy either, could they? If you played it safe, then you kept safe. Jeff figured he was pretty good at keeping safe - he didn't even look in mirrors because he didn't want to see Melody's eyes. But one result of that was that Jeff didn't know anything about himself. And he thought, sitting in the little boat, alone on the creek, alone with the creek and the sky and the marshes, that he might want to know more. — Cynthia Voigt

You need to have a lot of close family around you, a lot of friends to keep you honest. Take your time, take a year and just slow everything down a little bit. Get away from the success part, stay with yourself. Go off on a beach somewhere or do something to keep yourself aligned right. — George Lucas

Water makes me feel at peace. In Corsica, I spend most of my time on the beaches or in the rivers. That's one reason I love it there so much. The water is so clean and fresh - you can drink it straight out of the rivers! This island is my secret garden. — Laetitia Casta

I don't have the time, skill level, or experience to date one guy, let alone two. Fortunately, there's more to life than boys. How about we focus on something other than me finding a mate? — D.R. Graham

Just as the Mediterranean separated France from the country Algiers, so did the Mississippi separate New Orleans proper from Algiers Point. The neighborhood had a strange mix. It looked seedier and more laid-back all at the same time. Many artists lived on the peninsula, with greenery everywhere and the most beautiful and exotic plants. The French influence was heavy in Algiers, as if the air above the water had carried as much ambience as it could across to the little neighborhood. There were more dilapidated buildings in the community, but Jackson and Buddy passed homes with completely manicured properties, too, and wild ferns growing out of baskets on the porches, as if they were a part of the architecture. Many of the buildings had rich, ornamental detail, wood trim hand-carved by craftsmen and artisans years ago. The community almost had the look of an ailing beach town on some forgotten coast. — Hunter Murphy

At present men make shift to wear what they can get. Like shipwrecked sailors, they put on what they can find on the beach, and at a little distance, whether of space or time, laugh at each other's masquerade. — Henry David Thoreau

Everyone thinks footballers have it easy and at this time of year see loads of pictures of players relaxing on beaches and in bars but what they don't see is most of them will be doing their own fitness regimes. If you don't you will get back and you will be off the pace, might get injured and won't play football matches. — Colin Kazim-Richards

I looked at her without a word. She held an edge of the beach towel in each hand, pressing the edges against her cheeks. White smoke was rising from the cigarette between her fingers. With no wind to disturb it, the smoke rose straight up, like a miniature smoke signal. She was apparently having trouble deciding whether to cry or to laugh. At least she looked that way to me. She wavered atop the narrow line that divided one possibility from the other, but in the end she fell to neither side. May Kasahara pulled her expression together, put the towel on the ground, and took a drag on her cigarette. The time was nearly five o'clock, but the heat showed no sign of abating. — Haruki Murakami

When you eat, I want you to think of God, of the holiness of hands that feed us, of the provision we are given every time we eat. When you eat bread and you drink wine, I want you to think about the body and the blood every time, not just when the bread and wine show up in church, but when they show up anywhere - on a picnic table or a hardwood floor or a beach. — Shauna Niequist

The next time you stand on a beach at night, watching the moon's bright path across the water, and the conscious of the moon-drawn tides, remember that the moon itself may have been born of a great tidal wave of earthly substance, torn off into space. And remember if the moon was formed in this fashion, the event may have had much to do with shaping the ocean basins and the continents as we know them. — Rachel Carson

Dutch beaches were known to me as man-made territories, as part of various land reclamation projects. But I was also interested in the media reality of the Moon landing. I wanted to use that event as a measure of time, to see what had happened in those thirty years - which happens to be my lifetime as well. I was born in 1967 and I remember seeing the Moon landing on TV when I was two. All those things were in play. Then it became a big production. It took five months to gather up the goodwill and make it happen. — Aleksandra Mir

To clothe the penguins is a very serious business. At present when a penguin desires a penguin he knows precisely what he desires and his lust is limited by an exact knowledge of its object. At this moment two or three couples of penguins are making love on the beach. See with what simplicity! No one pays any attention and the actors themselves do not seem to be greatly preoccupied. But when the female penguins are clothed, the male penguin will not form so exact a notion of what it is that attracts him to them. His indeterminate desires will fly out into all sorts of dreams and illusions; in short, father, he will know love and its mad torments. And all the time the female penguins will cast down their eyes and bite their lips, and take on airs as if they kept a treasure under their clothes! . . . what a pity! — Anatole France

For the first time Rincewind saw the troll.
It wasn't half so bad as he had imagined.
Umm, said his imagination after a while.
It wasn't that the troll was horrifying. Instead of the rotting, betentacled monstrosity he had been expecting Rincewind found himself looking at a rather squat but not particularly ugly old man who would quite easily have passed for normal on any city street, always provided that other people on the street were used to seeing old men who were apparently composed of water and very little else. It was as if the ocean had decided to create life without going through all that tedious business of evolution, and had simply formed a part of itself into a biped and sent it walking squishily up the beach.
( ... ) How does he hold himself together, his mind screamed at him. Why doesn't he spill? — Terry Pratchett

We drove out along the coast road. There was the green of the headlands, the white, red-roofed villas, patches of forest, and the ocean very blue with the tide out and the water curling far out along the beach. We drove through Saint Jean de Luz and passed through villages farther down the coast. Back of the rolling country we were going through we saw the mountains we had come over from Pamplona. The road went on ahead. Bill looked at his watch. It was time for us to go back. He knocked on the glass and told the driver to turn around. The driver backed the car out into the grass to turn it. In back of us were the woods, below a stretch of meadow, then the sea. — Ernest Hemingway,

I love being outdoors and think a tan is very sexy. I'll lie out on white towels strewn with pillows. I don't like to hide under hats. If anyone knows about spending lots of the time on the beach, with kids and dogs in tow, it's me. — Pamela Anderson

Once, on ancient Earth, there was a human boy walking along a beach. There had just been a storm, and starfish had been scattered along the sands. The boy knew the fish would die, so he began to fling the fish to the sea. But every time he threw a starfish, another would wash ashore. "An old Earth man happened along and saw what the child was doing. He called out, 'Boy, what are you doing?' " 'Saving the starfish!' replied the boy. " 'But your attempts are useless, child! Every time you save one, another one returns, often the same one! You can't save them all, so why bother trying? Why does it matter, anyway?' called the old man. "The boy thought about this for a while, a starfish in his hand; he answered, "Well, it matters to this one." And then he flung the starfish into the welcoming sea. — Loren Eiseley

You will live to love again. You know you have lost your springtime girl, your Molly on the beach with the wind in her brown hair and red cloak. You have been gone too long from her, and too much has befallen you both. And what you loved, what both of you truly loved, was not each other. It was the time of your life. It was the spring of your years, and life running strong in you, and war on your doorstep and your strong, perfect bodies. Look back, in truth. You will find you recall fully as many quarrels and tears as you do lovemaking and kisses. Fitz. Be wise. Let her go, and keep those memories intact. Save what you can of her, and let her keep what she can of the wild and daring boy she loved. Because both he and that merry little miss are no more than memories anymore." She shook her head. "No more than memories. — Robin Hobb

It's not just the look, the cost, and the time involved in putting sunscreen on a child, it's the battle. My kids have no idea why they would have to wait to have fun while they are smeared with chemicals all over their face and body. They scream. They cry. "It burns!" The process of applying sunscreen just highlights the preposterousness of raising pale kids on a planet that revolves around a hot burning star that emits poisonous UV rays. I can never tell if the concerned looks from strangers are because they think I am torturing my children or because I am dressed like an out-of-shape Superman at the beach. Does anyone know where I can get a red swim cape? — Jim Gaffigan

I lay there with my mind running amuck, on the brink of madness. And somehow, gradually, early Sunday morning, I became calm. I can't think of any other word for it. I was thinking about the beach poem again, and I started to feel that I was being looked after, that everything was OK. It was strange: if there was ever a time in my life when I had the right to feel alone this was it. But I lost that sense of loneliness. I felt like there was a force in the room with me, not a person, but I had a sense that there was another world, another dimension, and it would be looking after me. It was like, This isn't the only world, this is just one aspect of the whole thing, don't imagine this is all there is. — John Marsden

Ah, my dad's whistle. On holidays when I was a kid, we would all be off in the rock pools along the beach. When it came time to go, we'd hear the whistle and we'd all come running. Like dogs! — Kate Winslet

On the other side of that big-ass mirror, a video camera was watching us. In about ten seconds, it was going to start spitting static at itself, and everything it saw was going to break up into a fuzzy, gray-white wash, rolling up and down, that wouldn't be admissible as evidence on Judge Judy. Those missing frames would last a little less than a quarter of a minute, consolidate themselves back
into a semblance of reality, and then I would theoretically go walking right back out of here.
Between now and that moment, there stretched an infinite ocean of potential
time. Time enough to walk around the world. Time enough to fall in love, get
married on a white beach under purple stars, write a book of poems about
truest passion, have a few good and bloody screaming matches, get divorced in a court of autumn elves and gypsy moths, then set the ink-stained, tear-streaked pages of your text ablaze. — Clinton Boomer

When you read books on your Kindle, the data about which phrases you highlight, which pages you turn, and whether you read straight through or skip around are all fed back into Amazon's servers and can be used to indicate what books you might like next. When you log in after a day reading Kindle e-books at the beach, Amazon is able to subtly customize its site to appeal to what you've read: If you've spent a lot of time with the latest James Patterson, but only glanced at that new diet guide, you might see more commercial thrillers and fewer health books. — Eli Pariser