All I need are some tasty waves and a cool buzz and I’m fine.

— Sean Penn as Jeff Spicoli, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, 1982

 

It’s about art.

— Laird Hamilton, 2004

I honestly can’t remember the first time I rode a wave. I suppose it was while playing in the shore break and I must have come to it so gradually that the memory has faded. It was probably inevitable that I’d learn to surf, for the ocean was my backyard. It was where I played every day from one season to the next and riding waves was a part of it. I’m sure it’s the same for anyone who grows up in close proximity to the sea—it becomes your home, your mother, the very essence of life.

— Nat Young, Nat’s Nat and That’s That, 1998

To become the energy of the wave, that’s the main idea. You take when the water gives, and you give when the water takes. It’s a constant interplay of bold confrontations and mellow respect.

— Billy Hamilton

I stood, high like on a mountain peak and dove down, but I stood it. The only sound in the vast moving green was the hissing of the board over the water. A couple of times it almost dropped away under my feet, but I found it again and stood my ground. “Shoot it, Gidget. Shoot the curl!”

— Gidget in Frederick Kohner’s Gidget, 1957

It’s an insatiable desire.

— Kelly Slater, Pipe Dreams: A Surfer’s Journey, 2003