Before he went to sleep, I told him a little story about a rabbit we saw run around the beach house we rented.

I have been drawing all my life.

But I don't sit down and think: this is meant for children.

Miffy has changed quite a lot since the early books, although I never realised it at the time.

Right at the beginning, I didn't know if Miffy was a boy or girl.

Then one day I thought it would be wonderful to make a whole book, to make my text and my drawings together, and that's how I started doing children's books.

I thought it was amazing to work with authors, to get a manuscript and try to make up a cover for it.

Now, I had been drawing all this time - especially in France of course - so, when I came back, my father gave me the chance to do a cover for one of the books he published.

I come from a family of business people, but I had the idea I wanted to become an artist.

I want a nice picture book with 12 pictures - I do my best with that format.

I did about 2000 covers altogether, for all sorts of books - from Shakespeare to James Bond - and I always had the idea that I must give 100%, no matter who the author was.

When I make a book, I make it for the child and not for the parent - no jokes in it for the parents!

My father realised that for me to become a publisher in his firm would have been the end of the firm!

Before he went to sleep, I told him a little story about a rabbit we saw run around the beach house we rented.

Each book first begins with a little idea.

But we discovered that, although I liked publishing, the commercial side meant nothing at all to me.

I thought it would be very nice to become Picasso or Rembrandt, or a van Gogh.

When you left on Saturday, I felt a horrible void, I saw you everywhere, on the beach, in your room, in the garden: impossible for me to get used to the idea that you had left.

Of course The Beach Boys will be camp.

Babies don't need a vacation, but I still see them at the beach... it pisses me off! I'll go over to a little baby and say 'What are you doing here? You haven't worked a day in your life!'

It sounds ideal, a sort of beach childhood. But it wasn't really. I didn't use the beach very much at all.

I like to cook, walk on the beach, go to concerts and look at fine art.

It was like in Samoa when they'd put up a movie screen on the beach and show movies and the locals would run behind the sheet to see where the people went. It was pretty grim.

I've never been one to run around in Speedos on the beach.

You know, The Beach Boys' image is kinda like a group Doris Day, you know what I mean?

The pictures we saw before we got down here didn't even touch the reality of what it is like being here. We can be right on the beach with all the devastation and still not be able to imagine what it was like when the wall of water actually came up.

I've been kind of submerged in my own little geographic location for a really long time in Venice Beach.

We filmed one scene on the beach and there was definitely weird energy around, and we were followed around by a white owl to several different locations, and little things like that, or certain mishaps would happen and you'd have to wonder what that was about.

The British are so funny. It's like they can't believe I lived in Hackney. 'You could live in Bondi Beach. Why would you want to live in 'Ackney?' But Hackney's fantastic. I'm serious. There are so many artists there. I loved the markets, the parks, the pubs, the diversity. It was a cultural melting-pot.

I rent houses in LA when I'm filming. I find the isolation there terrifying. There's nowhere to go, there's nowhere to be with people. I'm not a beach bunny.

One cannot collect all the beautiful shells on the beach. One can collect only a few, and they are more beautiful if they are few.

The moon is essentially gray, no color. It looks like plaster of Paris, like dirty beach sand with lots of footprints in it.

And I was in another band called Flash In The Pan, which was soca, Latin music, down in Laguna Beach.

They were heading out to the middle of the bay - the Gulf - that's another thing that became kind of standard practice, we didn't hurry the destroyers around the beach any more, when it got dark, we'd take 'em out thirty or forty miles out in the middle of the Tonkin Gulf.

I manage a team, for beach soccer. I'm the coach. Player, coach.

If Frank and The Beach Boys got together and did a Super Session album, it would be a gas.

There will always be a Beach Boys. Being a Beach Boy is like being in love.

I used to paint landscapes without any people in them but now I paint people who happen to be in a particular place. They might be outside a pub, or on a beach or in a studio. They might have clothes on or they might not.

I can't wait to be that age and hanging out with a bunch of people hanging out all day playing golf and going to the beach, all my own age. We'd be laughing and having a good time and getting loopy on our prescription drugs. Driving golf carts around. I can't wait.

A mere forty years ago, beach volleyball was just beginning. No bureaucrat would have invented it, and that's what freedom is all about.

The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach - waiting for a gift from the sea.

Well, obviously I wanted it to sound as original as possible. I suppose the influences that we had were probably from the actual power point of view we wanted to be like the Who. Vocally we wanted to be like the Beach Boys, whatever was good at the time.

The Beach Boys are not a superstar group. The music is the superstar of the group.

The awesomeness of God is that even in the works of the Beach Boys, Beatles, etc., the beauty of the music is a mere reflection of what God does everyday. He creates music of all kinds and moods.

I hate vacations. If you can build buildings, why sit on the beach?

I move between San Francisco and Paris... I have a wonderful beach house in California.

But I try to steal other moments. Sometimes I get up very early in the morning and enjoy a quiet house and cup of tea before the craziness begins. Other times, I'll take a quick walk on the beach. You can find peace in a few minutes.

What's really important in life? Sitting on a beach? Looking at television eight hours a day? I think we have to appreciate that we're alive for only a limited period of time, and we'll spend most of our lives working.

Miami Beach is where neon goes to die.