The son of a Fife mining town sledder of coal-bings, bottle-forager, and picture-house troglodyte, I was decidedly urban and knew little about native fauna, other than the handful of birds I saw on trips to the beach or Sunday walks.

I read and walked for miles at night along the beach, writing bad blank verse and searching endlessly for someone wonderful who would step out of the darkness and change my life. It never crossed my mind that that person could be me.

But I try to steal other moments. Sometimes I get up very early in the morning and enjoy a quiet house and cup of tea before the craziness begins. Other times, I'll take a quick walk on the beach. You can find peace in a few minutes.

That's a lot of words about the weather, but in Canberra you can't help but be aware of the seasons, and there is something wonderful about that. Okay, so there's a distinct lack of beach, but aside from that, the place grows on you.

I should perhaps warn you that I am about to faint from anxiety and general depression, though. The film I saw last night was especially grueling, a teen-age beach musical. I almost collapsed during the singing sequence on surfboard.

Slowly the wasters and despoilers are impoverishing our land, our nature, and our beauty, so that there will not be one beach, one hill, one lane, one meadow, one forest free from the debris of man and the stigma of his improvidence.

I was trying to put myself in a bottle that would one day wash up on the beach for my children. If I were a painter, I would have painted for them. If I were a musician, I would have composed music. But I am a lecturer. So I lectured.

I also really loved the sea when I was young, when I lived in Sicily, but unfortunately the sea here has been reduced to a trash dump. It's a horrible pain going to the beach; you risk getting an infection or getting tar all over you.

Good night.' Diana summoned all the dignity that she could manage in her bedraggled state and began to move back up the beach. Her dress was soaked and her stockings dotted with sand and her heart couldn't possibly withstand any more.

But my husband came from a small town and hardworking parents like I did, and I don't think we've lost that mind-set. We don't have a bowling alley in our basement. We don't have houses on the beach and one in New York and one in L.A.

We came from the '60s era, when we started and made so many hits. The song value from the '60s was so darn good, you've got The Beatles, The Beach Boys, all of Motown, and plenty of other people, too... amazing records, amazing songs.

I was in Florida with Burt Stern, the photographer who shot Marilyn Monroe on the beach with a sweater, and we smoked a joint. The bathing suit kept coming off in the water, and I just ripped it off. I was very comfortable being naked

I was 19 when I first auditioned for 'American Idol.' I'd never been on an airplane; I'd never been outside of my hometown, except to go to Myrtle Beach. I'm 22 now. I'm learning a lot about life, and it's all in front of the cameras.

I've immersed myself in reading more and more of American literature, but no editor has asked me to comment on Jonathan Franzen or Jennifer Egan. It is assumed I'm an expert on writers who need a little less suntan lotion at the beach.

We had idyllic summer holidays, building sandcastles with my father on the beach at Bridlington. It might sound strange, but I think that secure cocoon of familial love was so nourishing, it gave me the strength to live life on my own.

I went to Brazil in 2010 and pretty much did songs about that trip. I was there just to hang out, chill with the people, and feel the vibe. It was great - tons of great women, great skin, good beaches. Cant complain; the food is great.

Stephanie and I got married publicly on the beach, in front of friends and family, and the local police shut down the highway for us to cross the street back to my cousin's house. Cars backed up for miles, and everybody in town cheered.

When I'm not working, I love going to the beach. I am from Florida, so I definitely love the beach life. I love horse-back riding. Just to go out to a barn, it's fun. It's kind of like a get-away from the city. And also, I love animals.

I have always wanted to write a novel, and I tried many times but could never find the right story. One day, I was walking on the beach, and the idea for 'Groundswell' hit me. I went into the house and started writing and never stopped.

Go with the pain, let it take you. Open your palms and your body to the pain. It comes in waves like the tide and you must be open as a vessel lying on the beach, letting it fill you up and then, retreating, leaving you empty and clear.

I love going to the beach in the tropics and doing whatever I do - surfing, swimming or being - and the glow when I get a tan that deepens. I walk around with red and gold in my skin and feel like the most beautiful thing on the planet!

When did an old white guy yelling at me, telling me what to think become news? What gives him the right to tell me what to think? When was the last time he was in Iraq or Afghanistan or Sri Lanka... or anywhere that didn't have a beach?

And perhaps beyond those shrouded swells another man did walk with another child on the dead gray sands. Slept but a sea apart on another beach among the bitter ashes of the world or stood in their rags lost to the same indifferent sun.

I love going to the beach in the tropics and doing whatever I do - surfing, swimming or being - and the glow when I get a tan that deepens. I walk around with red and gold in my skin and feel like the most beautiful thing on the planet!

As a reader, I do not like to have everything handed to me. Because after a while it gets formulaic and I'm thinking, "If this is so thought through, then why do I need to read it. It's done!" It becomes a beach book at a certain point.

I live three blocks away from the beach, so every day I walk down to the beach to run or go swimming. Hiking is a big one for me - so long as it's something where I'm not thinking about working out, like in a contrived class or the gym.

It's just fantastic to have someone like the Duchess of Cambridge wear the brand. I think there are often misconceptions about who the brand is for, but it's not just a 20-year-old blonde girl on the beach, and Kate is testament to that.

Los Angeles is a very magical place when you take the entertainment industry out of it. You have beautiful beaches and amazing mountains here. I'm a big rock climber. I head out into the mountains whenever I have free time. It's amazing.

The beach has a language of its own, with its undulating ribbons of silt, the imponderable hieroglyphs of bird tracks. The receding waves catch on innumerable holes in the sand. Bubbles form and fade. A new language, with a new alphabet.

I would never be into splitting up. I don't think we should ever break up, I really don't. I think we should allow each person to do things individually - go off and have a baby, lie on the beach, whatever - but still remain Girls Aloud.

Being a superstar... can make life very difficult, difficult to grow. So I like to visit with my friends, listen to some fine music, drink some good wine, perhaps take a ride in the country in a fine car, or... just walk along the beach.

There's a drive in us to express ourselves in some way or form. We pick up whatever material is available. It's primitive. Kids see sand on the beach, build something and show their parents: "Look what I did, Mama." It's necessary to us.

We walk up the beach under the stars. And when we are tired of walking, we lie flat on the sand under a bowl of stars. We feel stretched, expanded to take in their compass. They pour into us until we are filled with stars, up to the brim.

When I started travelling, I would go to a city and be on television and I used to get the question, 'Why do you work? If I were you, I'd just go and lie on a beach somewhere.' And I'd answer, 'Well, I wanted to make something of my life.

The library, I believe, is the last of our public institutions to which you can go without credentials. You don't even need the sticker on your windshield that you need to get into the public beach. All you need is the willingness to read.

Two lost things that had survived the seas and arrived on a coastline. What did they do? They implanted themselves in the sand and grew into trees and lined the beaches. Sometimes a lot can come of being all washed up. You can really grow.

It is not possible to rent a beach house within five hours' drive of one's hometown without being visited by people. This is especially true if I have actually invited them. One of my problems is that I like to be nicer than I actually am.

The eye of the trilobite tells us that the sun shone on the old beach where he lived; for there is nothing in nature without a purpose, and when so complicated an organ was made to receive the light, there must have been light to enter it.

I do as many fun activities as possible. A lot of hiking, beach bike riding and walking. And cardio barre, which is a dance-based workout at a ballet barre. It's a full-body workout for one hour on Monday, Wednesday and Friday in a studio.

When I started travelling, I would go to a city and be on television and I used to get the question, 'Why do you work? If I were you, I'd just go and lie on a beach somewhere.' And I'd answer, 'Well, I wanted to make something of my life.'

I love discomfort. I mean, my whole life is discomfort. One reason I can never retire is that the idea of just sitting on the beach totally comfortable is not a desideratum in my life. I like ambiguity, I like conflict, I like uncertainly.

I was kind of a tough girl. And I guess that came through, like, moving around, my parents getting a divorce, different step-families, and stuff like that. I'd been through a little bit more than most people who are just from Laguna Beach.

After my husband died, I felt like one of those spiraled shells washed upon the beach... Poke a straw through the twisting tunnel, around and around, and there is nothing there. No flesh. No life. Whatever lived there is dried up and gone.

Even though my face has gotten more familiar with doing 'China Beach' and 'The Wonder Years,' I'm the kind of actor that people thought, 'Gee, that guy looks familiar. He must have put my storm windows in. He works at my bank or something.'

Australia is so cool that it's hard to even know where to start describing it. The beaches are beautiful; so is the weather. Not too crowded. Great food, great music, really nice people. It must be a lot like Los Angeles was many years ago.

I still feel like a castaway, th elast of a once numerous species. It was as though Robinson Crusoe discovered the telltale footprint on the beach and then realized that it was his own. Myself, small as a leaf, thin as water, begins to cry.

As a writer, I've always been the sum total of my influences, and those are all over the spectrum: Rachmaninov, the Who, the Beatles, the Beach Boys, Lesley Gore, Burt Bacharach and Leonard Bernstein, the Rolling Stones and the Small Faces.

In my mind, I imagined L.A. to be skyscrapers on the beach. Of course, that's not what it actually looks like. And growing up watching 'Beverly Hills 90210' and 'Melrose Place,' I always had an obsession with L.A. and California in general.

I think its really matured a lot. I like the fact that there is now more to do there than gamble, since I don't do a lot of that. The people are great. I seldom have time for vacations and when I do I prefer the beach instead of the desert.

The band would play on the night off for the local hotel bands and we'd back all the different acts. So I'd been advised by good friends of mine to come back to Hawaii. Oh, I loved Honolulu, playing at a place right on the beach at Waikiki!

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