“When I finally came in and complained, she tried to explain, not for the first time, how exquisitely boring it was to watch surfing. The lulls between sets seemed to go on for hours. There had been, it was true,… — William Finnegan Copy Share Image
The differences between the received wisdom, the standard version of events, and the facts on the ground may be subtle or they may be… — William Finnegan Copy Share
Writing is pretty flexible work, don't you think? If you want to surf, you just have to get a lot done when the waves… — William Finnegan Copy Share
You're after something - not a story, but a certain, exquisitely intense encounter with beauty - and the only way to find it is… — William Finnegan Copy Share
“When I finally came in and complained, she tried to explain, not for the first time, how exquisitely boring it was to watch surfing.… — William Finnegan Copy Share
It's completely different, for instance, to report on poor farmers in Africa than it is to report on, say, poor African-Americans. The familiarity of… — William Finnegan Copy Share
“Surfing, to begin with, was not a “sport.” It was a “path.” And the more you poured into it, the more you got back… — William Finnegan Copy Share
“I later spent a year studying Finnegans Wake with Norman O. Brown, an exercise in masturbatory obscurantism that Bryan would never have undertaken—and he… — William Finnegan Copy Share
Poor-country surf communities can be complex and, to some extent, leveling. The fisherman's kid is competing head to head with the plutocrat's gilded son.… — William Finnegan Copy Share
I need to conduct myself differently in different communities. In my experience, the journalistic conventions - you know, I'm the reporter, you're the subject,… — William Finnegan Copy Share
There are good waves not that far from Manhattan - on Long Island, in north Jersey. It's true that the best surf around here… — William Finnegan Copy Share
I'm trying to find out what's actually true, which is nearly always something, if not a world of things, that you can't read in… — William Finnegan Copy Share
I remember surfing in Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, even Madeira, when local fishermen had never seen a surfboard before, and refused to believe that we… — William Finnegan Copy Share
Even wars, big conflicts that have drawn a lot of news coverage, sometimes seem to me to have a center that hasn't been described,… — William Finnegan Copy Share
As I travelled around Australia, strangers in pubs, on airplanes, in beach parking lots would bring up Gina Rinehart, not knowing I was writing… — William Finnegan Copy Share
“Being friends as in writing letters was so much easier than being friends as in living together.” — William Finnegan Copy Share
