Beach Quotes

If I had to pick one tribe to go back and live with permanently – and I hate doing this, it’s not a contest – it would be the people of Anuta, in the South Pacific. It’s got white beaches, blue seas, good food and gentle, friendly people who have a wonderful philosophy of sharing. And it’s warm.

The anthropologist must relinquish his comfortable position in the long chair on the veranda of the missionary compound, Government station, or planter’s bungalow, where, armed with pencil and notebook and at times with a whisky and soda, he has been accustomed to collect statements from informants…. He must go out into the villages, and see the natives at work in gardens, on the beach, in the jungle; he must sail with them to distant sandbanks and to foreign tribes.

There have been so many times where I thought I put on enough sunscreen but actually didn’t. As a result, I’d get unbelievable tan lines. Of course in Florida it was expected, but now looking back at pictures, I think I spent an entire summer at the beach with my friends looking like a tomato. A bright shade of red.

We went to a church that had missionaries who’d come back once a year from Fiji & give talks. I remember one of them saying it was very hard work telling people they were going to lose their everlasting souls if they didn’t shape up. I pictured people sitting on the beach listening to this sweaty man all dressed in black telling them they were going to burn in hell & them thinking this was good fun, these scary stories this guy was telling them & afterwards, they’d all go home & eat mango & fish & they’d play Monopoly & laugh & laugh & they’d go to bed & wake up the next day & do it all again.

You asked me if I believed in magic, and I said yes, and that’s how. You just step out, start pulling your life out of the air. You make friends, you find work you really like doing, you find places. You find diners and Laundromats. You find beaches. You find a junk car and drive it for a month, then lave it beside the road. You find someone to fall in love with you. You make it all up as you go. Or, you know, maybe it makes you up.

I think teenagers just don’t have the persistence to pretend to like something they don’t anymore. I used to do that – make myself like stuff that didn’t immediately appeal to me. When you’re 17 and checking out John Cage records from the library. It’s not like it’s got the hooks of a Ramones record, or a Beach Boys record. But at the same time, you’re like, I know there’s something in here that I’m supposed to understand. And then eventually you find it.

Any more questions?” I ask, poking him gently in the ribs. “Do you still love me any?” Eliot asks, putting his hand over mine. “A little.” “A little?” he asks, pulling away from me. “A lot.” “How much?” he asks. “More than chocolate chip cookies.” “Mmm” he says, kissing my shoulder. “More than walking on the beach.” Eliot kisses me on the neck. “More than . . .” I pause, turning to look at him. “More than?” he asks, kissing my lips. I turn toward him. “Anything.

You asked me if I believed in magic, and I said yes, and that’s how. You just step out, start pulling your life out of the air. You make friends, you find work you really like doing, you find places. You find diners and Laundromats. You find beaches. You find a junk car and drive it for a month, then lave it beside the road. You find someone to fall in love with you. You make it all up as you go. Or, you know, maybe it makes you up.

Cocoa-buttered girls were stretched out on the public beach in apparently random alignments, but maybe if a weather satellite zoomed in on one of those bodies and then zoomed back out, the photos would show the curving beach itself was another woman, a fractal image made up of the particulate sunbathers. All the beaches pressed together might form female landmasses, female continents, female planets and galaxies. No wonder men felt tense.