The fundamental delusion of humanity is to suppose that I am here and you are out there.
We dream of the perfect wave, the perfect job, the perfect house. When we get there, we dream of something else.
To catch a wave, to stand up - it was just life-changing. There was nothing that even came close. I quit playing all other sports - by the time I was eleven, they were toast.
At any given time, there are a lot of million-dollar luxury charter boats cruising around the Mentawai Islands finding the most incredible waves. And yet the people on shore are suffering. The whole scene is wrong. As a surf community, we have to do something.
I've always been a big supporter of the Surfrider Foundation. I started my own foundation, Rob Machado Foundation, which focuses on environmental education for the little people of the world.
The surfing - the waves in Indonesia are amazing.
I may make light of being a domestic terrorist, but if they can brand me a domestic terrorist and confiscate all my materials, and then expand into confiscating other people's materials, and then go after Gibson Guitars and so many other different people. . . they can go after you, they can go after everybody, we could all be "terrorists. " That's really the big concern.
I want my words to survive translation. I know when I write a book now I will have to go and spend three days being intensely interrogated by journalists in Denmark or wherever. That fact, I believe, informs the way I write - with those Danish journalists leaning over my shoulder.
I don't read a word that's written about me. I don't read my own interviews. I don't read reviews. I think it would drive me insane.
Courage does not consist in calculation, but in fighting against chances.