John John Florence

“One of my biggest influences growing up was Jamie O'Brien. He was like an older brother to me.”

“There's a risk to everything you do. You can take off on a one-foot wave and get hurt; you can take off on a ten-foot wave and get hurt. You just don't think about it at all. You just go for it. When you kick out of a really big wave, it feels pretty damn good. You want to do it again.”

“I think winning the world tour events is pretty special. They're just so hard to win.”

“Africa is one of my favorite places because there are so many things to do - either surfing or going to see the animals. You can drive two hours or six hours up the coast - or just 15 minutes up the road - and it's probably something you haven't seen before.”

“You just keep doing stuff, and one thing evolves into another. Then suddenly it's like, 'Oh, wait, I'm here surfing against Kelly Slater and all these guys I grew up watching.'”

“I eat a lot of pasta. We eat relatively healthy. I don't eat fast food, mostly home-cooked stuff. Chicken. Salads. Stuff like that. Oatmeal for breakfast. A big dinner.”

“Training is not quite a thing for me yet. It is definitely on my list of things to do.”

“In the past, I had these really high-tech boardshorts.”

“I love it when people make things look fun and easy. Guys like Dane Reynolds and Kelly Slater and Pedro on a skateboard, they're never forcing it.”

“I'm excited to go surfing every time. I have fun in any kind of wave in the ocean.”

“No one wants to tell you their secrets, because you never know when you might get a heat with them.”

“Every part of me is a surfer. I love surfing, and I love the waves that I surf. So that's the thing that I get excited about most: What kind of waves am I going to be able to surf? Am I going to be surfing alone, or will we be surfing waves that no one's surfed before? Second to that is photography.”

“When you start forcing things, that's when you get hurt.”

“I still get scared every time I go out. I get scared taking off; I get scared on the wave, falling, everything. But, you know, growing up with it, I guess you're a little more comfortable.”

“You go to a contest, and it's like, 'OK, I'm here for two weeks. All my energy, time, thinking, and everything is going toward that.' Everything you're doing is building toward the score at the end.”

“The place where I grew up is the center of surfing. Everyone who grows up on the North Shore surfs, and from October to March, you have the best waves in the world within a 5- to 7-mile stretch. I grew up in the center of these incredible sunsets and all these incredible waves. And then we have the Triple Crown of Surfing.”

“You have to go into every event with 100 percent confidence and just surf your best because everyone there is there to win, and no one is going to give you the heat. You have to win by a mile to really make a heat.”

“I like to eat really early, 4 or 5 o'clock. That helps out a lot, to digest before you sleep.”

“I'd be in elementary school all week, and then on the weekend, my mom would take us to Kauai or to the Big Island or to California for a contest. That was really fun.”

“I just want to be able surf everything - from big waves to small waves.”