“When I was learning to creep, my mother set me down on the beach to se...” — Sylvia Plath Quote

When I was learning to creep, my mother set me down on the beach to see what I thought of it. I crawled straight for the coming wave and was just through the wall of green when she caught my heels.

Now and then, when I grow nostalgic about my ocean childhood - the wauling of gulls and the smell of salt, somebody solicitous will bundle me into a car and drive me to the nearest briny horizon.

In London the day after Christmas (Boxing Day), it began to snow: my first snow in England. For five years, I had been tactfully asking, 'Do you ever have snow at all?' as I steeled myself to the six months of wet, tepid gray that make up an English winter. 'Ooo, I do remember snow,' was the usual reply, 'when I were a lad.'

I’ll never speak to God again.

New York is like a vacation - no beach required.

There are not many places in the world where you can get to the beach in an hour, the desert in two hours and snowboarding or skiing in three hours. You can do all that in California.

I don't see myself as the next Carmen Dell'Orefice. I'd rather be fat and happy, sitting on a beach in Hawaii eating pizza.

As a kid in the projects, I always looked forward to spring break. We'd either have cousins visiting us for the week from up north, and we'd all play sports together, or sometimes I'd go to Vero Beach and hang with my cousins there.

My son walked up to Nicole on the beach and I was throwing the ball for the dogs in the ocean. I was like, 'Max, you get the dogs. I'll talk to the hot blondes.'