“They have a lateral line down their whole body that senses motion, but maybe it does more than that.”

My first encounter with the ocean was on the Jersey Shore when I was three years old and I got knocked over by a wave.

There’s something missing about how we’re informing the youngsters coming along about what matters in the world. We teach them the numbers and the letters, but we fail to communicate the importance of our connection to the living world.

Hold up a mirror and ask yourself what you are capable of doing, and what you really care about. Then take the initiative – don’t wait for someone else to ask you to act.

Protecting vital sources of renewal – unscathed marshes, healthy reefs, and deep-sea gardens – will provide hope for the future of the Gulf, and for all of us.

When I first ventured into the Gulf of Mexico in the 1950s, the sea appeared to be a blue infinity too large, too wild to be harmed by anything that people could do.

I want everybody to go jump in the ocean to see for themselves how beautiful it is, how important it is to get acquainted with fish swimming in the ocean, rather than just swimming with lemon slices and butter.

Bottom trawling is a ghastly process that brings untold damage to sea beds that support ocean life.

No water, no life. No blue, no green.

America gains most when individuals have great freedom to pursue personal goals without undue government interference.

Ice ages have come and gone. Coral reefs have persisted.

A lumberman will look at a forest and see so many board feet of lumber. I see a living city.

I have lots of heroes: anyone and everyone who does whatever they can to leave the natural world better than they found it.

I have heard endlessly that fish are so resilient that there is no way that you could exterminate a species. We are learning otherwise.

Our insatiable appetite for fossil fuels and the corporate mandate to maximize shareholder value encourages drilling without taking into account the costs to the ocean, even without major spills.

Look at the bark of a redwood, and you see moss.

We did not want, from garbage and nuclear wastes to sludge from sewage to entire ships that had reached the end of their useful life.

For years, they were doing horrible things to animals in the manufacture of cosmetics, and testing of the most barbaric types; today, if you go into a drugstore and go down the [cosmetics] aisle.

It’s your birthday today, so what would you say, if we turned that frown upside down

It still has these damn four things in it. Anything else is just unnecessary additions to make it smell good or color it blue when it goes down the toilet.

Composing was more difficult than writing things down.

Ian Callaghan will go down as one of the game’s truly great players.

The hawk swoops down on its prey, so does the Indian. In his lament he is like an animal.

Know who you are, because that’s how you will be cast at first. Then you can be Meryl Streep further down the road.

I know that Oswald killed Kennedy. Now, was he pushed? Encouraged to do it by outsiders? Possibly. Possibly. Was he sitting down with Fidel Castro? No.