I grew up in a family that believed love was at work in the world. I guess that's a religious idea, though of course it needn't be.

There is nowhere else I'd rather be, nothing else I would prefer to be doing. I am at the beach looking west with the continent behind me as the sun tracks down to the sea. I have my bearings.

The ocean is a supreme metaphor for change. I expect the unexpected but am never fully prepared.

It's the pointless things that give your life meaning. Friendship, compassion, art, love. All of them pointless. But they're what keeps life from being meaningless.

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.

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.

The desert is a spiritual place, we vaguely understand, and the sea the mere playground of our hedonism.

I came home at dusk with my ears ringing from the quiet.

Overfishing is an obvious threat to our capacity to feed ourselves.

It's impossible to imagine what Australia would be like without surfing.

People do change - individuals, families, nations - and the pace of transformation need not be geological.

If you desire a joyful heart, dance daily.

The Fukushima nuclear complex went on to become the worst man-made engineering disaster in all of human history, outside of war.

When it comes to memories, the good and the bad never balance.

Patience endurance define the attractiveness of life.

Power is ever stealing from the many to the few.

Every now and then we discover in the seething mass of humanity round us a person who does not seem to need anybody else, and the contrast with ourselves is stinging.

If this is how science operates, by silencing those who express opposing views rather than by debating with them, then science is dead and we are in a new era of the Inquisition.

something has been said for sobriety but very little.

You can't win every battle! You must have the word Defeat in your dictionary; if not, defeat will triumph even more strongly!

Neurogenesis continues throughout life and we have the capacity to establish new neural pathways and strengthen existing ones.