Ah, but you, Darkness, you know all this. I tell you night after night. Nothing will shock you. Maybe I go on at you in the hope that there's something beyond you. Some nights I sit here and talk and sob and stare out into the blackness thinking that if I look hard enough I'll see the light behind. But I stay out until the break of day, waiting, hoping, and there's only sunrise again.

Hunting and gathering are in my blood. But I've lived long enough to witness a diminution in the seas, and to notice a fragility where once I saw - or assumed - an endless bounty.

We rise to a challenge and set a course. We take a decision. You put your mind to something. Just deciding to do it gets you halfway there. Daring to try.

For every moment the sea is peace and relief, there is another when it shivers and stirs to become chaos. It's just as ready to claim as it is to offer.

When you're surfing you're not thinking about where you parked the car or what you're going to do when you grow up or what you're going to buy when you've got lots of money. You know, you're just there. You're in the moment. And I think in a contemporary world, that's a rare privilege.

Every great moment of social change was once a confirmed impossibility. People's determination in the face of overwhelming odds has, time and again, triumphed over what seems impossible. This is what you tell yourself.

Wherever I went I felt like the last person awake in a room full of sleepers