“You’ll have to train your brain to be happy without air.”

“It takes time, dedication, calculation, and study. You have to study the ocean. If you don’t dig into the nuts and bolts how the ocean works, how water moves, the differences between a long interval swell and a short interval swell, the way your favorite beach changes when the waves are two feet to when it’s 10 feet. You have to add all that in your memory banks. That’s all stored memory that you need to draw on for your whole life of surfing.”

“If you see somebody going on a two-wave hold-down, you want to see them come up. You need to see them come up.”

“I’ve rescued enough people that have had accidents, blown eardrums, where they couldn’t find the surface. If they had a vest on, some of my friends might still be alive today.”