Benchley Quotes & Sayings

One, two, three / Buckle my shoe. — Robert Benchley

Why don't you get out of that wet coat and into a dry martini? — Robert Benchley

I haven't been abroad in so long that I almost speak English without an accent now. — Robert Benchley

This congestion in the post offices is due to what are technically known as "regulations" but what are really a series of acrostics and anagrams devised by some officials who got around a table one night and tried to be funny. — Robert Benchley

What was it? What could it
His last thought was surprise. — Peter Benchley

But compared with the task of selecting a piece of French pastry held by an impatient waiter a move in chess is like reaching for a salary check in its demand on the contemplative faculties. — Robert Benchley

Many of the writers who have inspired me most are outside the genre: Humorists like Robert Benchley and James Thurber, screenwriters like Ben Hecht and William Goldman, and journalists/columnists like H.L. Mencken, Mike Royko and Molly Ivins. — John Scalzi

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water ... — Peter Benchley

There is probably not more than one hundred dollars in cash in circulation today. That is, if you were to call in all the bills and silver and gold in the country at noon tomorrow and pile them on the table, you would find that you had just about one hundred dollars, with perhaps several Canadian pennies and a few peppermint Life Savers. — Robert Benchley

All that a spectator gets out of the game is fresh air, the comical articles in his program, the sight of twenty-two young men rushing about in mysterious formations, and whatever he brought in his flask. — Robert Benchley

One of the few advantages man has over other animals is the ability to choose the way to bring on his own death. Food may well kill me, but it's also what has made life such a pleasure. — Peter Benchley

Anyone will be glad to admit that he knows nothing about beagling, or the Chinese stock market, or ballistics, but there is not a man or woman alive who does not claim to know how to cure hiccoughs. — Robert Benchley

You won't find one fish in a million that has enough sense to come in when it rains. — Robert Benchley

The biggest obstacle to professional writing is the necessity for changing a typewriter ribbon. — Robert Benchley

Look, Chief, you can't go off half-cocked looking for vengeance against a fish. That shark isn't evil. It's not a murderer. It's just obeying its own instincts. Trying to get retribution against a fish is crazy. — Peter Benchley

The wise man thinks once before he speaks twice. — Robert Benchley

Tell us your phobias and we will tell you what you are afraid of. — Robert Benchley

Sheer madness is, of course, the highest possible brow in humor. — Robert Benchley

Before 1975, if you knew the name Howard Sackler it was because he was the author behind the 1969 Broadway play The Great White Hope, which won Sackler the Tony and New York Drama Critics Circle award as the year's Best Play as well as the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. A friend of film producer David Brown, Sackler accepted the offer to do a re-write on Jaws author Peter Benchley's script for the film version of his novel. Sackler's main contribution to the story was the back story that the shark fisherman, Quint, derived his hatred for sharks from having survived the sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis in July of 1945 (in the film, Quint errantly states the date as "June the 29th, 1945"). — Louis R. Pisano

Most personal correspondence of today consists of letters the first half of which are given over to an indexed statement of why the writer hasn't written before, followed by one paragraph of small talk, with the remainder devoted to reasons why it is imperative that the letter be brought to a close. — Robert Benchley

The Great Arizona Desert is full of the bleaching bones of people who waited for me to start something. — Robert Benchley

The Ultimate Day really begins the night before, when you sit up until one o'clock trying to get things into trunk and bags. This is when you discover the well-known fact that summer air swells articles to twice or three times their original size. — Robert Benchley

In Milwaukee last month a man died laughing over one of his own jokes. That's what makes it so tough for us outsiders. We have to fight home competition. — Robert Benchley

Anyone who tries to keep track of what is happening in China is going to end up by wearing all the skin of his left ear from twirling around on it. — Robert Benchley

I can't quite define my aversion to asking questions of strangers. From snatches of family battles which I have heard drifting up from railway stations and street corners, I gather that there are a great many men who share my dislike for it, as well as an equal number of women who ... believe it to be the solution to most of this world's problems. — Robert Benchley

We're going to need a bigger boat. — Peter Benchley

There seems to be a common strain of miserliness in the American people when it comes to throwing away toothpaste tubes which havea little left in the bottom. — Robert Benchley

The art of cursing people seems to have lost its tang since the old days when a good malediction took four deep breaths to deliverand sent the outfielders scurrying toward the fence to field. — Robert Benchley

A human being is still more likely to die of a bee sting, snake bite or, Lord knows, automobile accident than by shark attack. We do not execute the perpretrators of death by car. We should not butcher an animal for an inadvertent homicide. — Peter Benchley

One of the chief duties of the fan is to engage in arguments with the man behind him. This department of the game has been allowed to run down fearfully. — Robert Benchley

I don't want to be an alarmist, but I think that the Younger Generation is up to something ... I base my apprehension on nothing more definite than the fact that they are always coming in and going out of the house, without any apparent reason. — Robert Benchley

mean anything." She seemed subdued, sad. — Peter Benchley

Maybe. Maybe not. Look, the Latin name for this fish is Carcharodon carcharias, okay? The closest ancestor we can find for it is something called Carcharodon megalodon, a fish that existed maybe thirty or forty thousand years ago. We have fossil teeth from megalodon. They're six inches long. That would put the fish at between eighty and a hundred feet. And the teeth are exactly like the teeth you see in great whites today. What I'm getting at is, suppose the two fish are really one species. What's to say megalodon is really extinct? Why should it be? — Peter Benchley

Ellen Brody:
Wanna get drunk and fool around?

Brody:
Oh Yeah. — Peter Benchley

Infants need the most sleep, and, what is more, get it. Stunning them with a soft, padded hammer is the best way to insure their getting it at the right times. — Robert Benchley

There is probably no more obnoxious class of citizen, taken end for end, than the returning vacationist. — Robert Benchley

I know now that the mythic monster I created was largely a fiction. — Peter Benchley

Drinking makes such fools of people, and people are such fools to begin with that it's compounding a felony. — Robert Benchley

As for me, except for an occasional heart attack, I feel as young as I ever did. — Robert Benchley

I was so lucky that I didn't have anyone to copy, be impressed by. I had developed my own style, I was creating before I knew there was a Thurber, a Benchley, a Price and a Steinberg. I never saw their work until I was around thirty. — Shel Silverstein

He would have lied to himself as facilely as an alcoholic lies to himself to justify the 10 a.m. tumbler of vodka : it may be early here, but in Baghdad it's almost evening. — Peter Benchley

Nine-tenths of the value of a sense of humor in writing is not in the things it makes one write but in the things it keeps one from writing. It is especially valuable in this respect in serious writing, and no one without a sense of humor should ever write seriously. For without knowing what is funny, one is constantly in danger of being funny without knowing it. — Robert Benchley

If you look at eggs, you will see that each one is almost round but not quite ... Nature's way of distinguishing eggs from large golf balls. — Robert Benchley

A freelance is one who gets paid by the word
per piece or perhaps. — Robert Benchley

paper-pushers can't figure me out. all they understand is bullshit and politics, which amounts to the same thing. — Peter Benchley

A man may take care of a furnace for twenty-five years and still forget to duck his head when he starts going down the cellar stairs. — Robert Benchley

don't mind. I just thought you might not want to." The three men — Peter Benchley

Suppose you fell over with this fish. Is there anything you could do? Sure. Pray. It'd be like falling out of an airplane without a parachute and hoping you'll land in a haystack. The only thing that'd save you would be God, and since He pushed you overboard in the first place, I wouldn't give a nickel for your chances. — Peter Benchley

He and I had an office so tiny, that an inch smaller and it would have been adultery. — Dorothy Parker

be possible that — Victoria Benchley

It is one of the most discouraging experiences I have ever had, not forgetting the time when I winked at the Queen Mother in London once. — Robert Benchley

One of the easiest forms of pretense to break down is the pretense of enthusiasm for exotic foods. Just bring on the exotic foods. — Robert Benchley

If you're young and wild, you tend to believe your clippings. One day you're Hemingway. The next day you're nothing. — Peter Benchley

There was a minor burst of macho nuttiness after 'Jaws' came out, in which people would go off in shark tournaments and come back holding the bloody heads of these animals and say, 'Look what I did.' But they've been doing that for hundreds of thousands of years anyway. — Peter Benchley

I hope that 'Jaws' will have brought sharks into the public interest at a time when we desperately need to reevaluate our care for the environment. — Peter Benchley

She sleeps alone at last. — Robert Benchley

You're gonna need a bigger boat. — Peter Benchley

I once heard a woman laugh at that most tragic moment in all drama, the off-stage shot in "The Wild Duck," and I afterward had her killed, so there will be no more of that out of her. — Robert Benchley

If Shakespeare were alive today and writing comedy for the movies, he would be the head-liner for the Mack Sennett studios. — Robert Benchley

An ardent supporter of the hometown team should go to a game prepared to take offense, no matter what happens. — Robert Benchley

What is the disease which manifests itself in an inability to leave a party
any party at all
until it is all over and the lightsare being put out? ... I suppose that part of this mania for staying is due to a fear that, if I go, something good will happen and I'll miss it. Somebody might do card tricks, or shoot somebody else. — Robert Benchley

I am more the inspirational type of speller. I work on hunches rather than mere facts, and the result is sometimes open to criticism by purists. — Robert Benchley

This is a test. It is only a test. Had it been an actual job, you would have received raises, promotions, and other signs of appreciation. — Robert Benchley

Who said time machines haven't been built yet? They already exist. They're called books — Robert Benchley

There is no doubt that every healthy, normal boy ... should own a dog at some time in his life, preferably between the ages of forty-five and fifty. — Robert Benchley

I do most of my work sitting down; that's where I shine. — Robert Benchley

Come up fish. Come to Quint. — Peter Benchley

Consider the number of young people all over the world who are getting married, day in and day out, for no other reason than thatsomeone of the opposite sex looks well in a green jersey or sings baritone, and then tell me that divorce has reached menacing proportions. The surface of divorce has not even been scratched yet. — Robert Benchley

I am pretty sure that, if you will be quite honest, you will admit that a good rousing sneeze, one that tears open your collar and throws your hair into your eyes, is really one of life's sensational pleasures. — Robert Benchley

Sunday morning may be cheery enough, with its extra cup of coffee and litter of Sunday newspapers, but there is always hanging over it the ominous threat of 3 P.M., when the sun gets around to the back windows and life stops dead in its tracks. — Robert Benchley

I have tried to know absolutely nothing about a great many things, and I have succeeded fairly well. — Robert Benchley

I never liked bananas much anyway. Two-thirds of the way down even one banana I am willing to concede defeat smilingly and give the rest to the nearest monkey. — Robert Benchley

He awoke at five, to the whine of the television test pattern, turned off the set, and listened for the wind. It had moderated and seemed to be coming from a different quarter, but it still carried rain. He debated calling Quint, but thought, no, no use: we'll be going even if this blows up into a gale. He went upstairs and quietly dressed. Before he left the bedroom, he looked at Ellen, who had a frown on her sleeping face. "I do love you, you know," he whispered, and he kissed her brow. He started down the stairs and then, impulsively, went and looked in the boys' bedrooms. They were all asleep. — Peter Benchley

Central Park is the grandiose symbol of the front yard each child in New York hasn't got. — Robert Benchley

At fifteen one is first beginning to realize that everything isn't money and power in this world, and is casting about for joys that do not turn to dross in one's hands. — Robert Benchley

We are constantly being surprised that people did things well before we were born. — Robert Benchley

Nick got home the first week in December, to find New York still wallowing in its post-Armistice euphoria. Service men were celebrities wherever they went, and nothing was too good for them-especially the ones who were wounded-until it came down to such practical matters as finding housing or a job...It too him awhile to come to the conclusion that all the talk about help for veterans was just that, and anything that was done for him would have to be done by himself. — Nathaniel Benchley

What is to be done with people who can't read a Sunday paper without messing it all up? ... Show me a Sunday paper which has been left in a condition fit only for kite flying, and I will show you an antisocial and dangerous character who has left it that way. — Robert Benchley

Every boy should have two things: a dog and a mother who lets him have one — Robert Benchley

For a nation which has an almost evil reputation for bustle, bustle, bustle, and rush, rush, rush, we spend an enormous amount of time standing around in line in front of windows, just waiting. — Robert Benchley

The only cure for a real hangover is death. — Robert Benchley

Breaking the ice in the pitcher seems to be a feature of the early lives of all great men. — Robert Benchley

The fish might well have disappeared already, but Brody wasn't willing to gamble lives on the possibility: the odds might be good, but the stakes were prohibitively high. — Peter Benchley

The naturalistic literature of this country has reached such a state that no family of characters is considered true to life whichdoes not include at least two hypochondriacs, one sadist, and one old man who spills food down the front of his vest. — Robert Benchley

I once heard of a murderer who propped his two victims up against a chess board in sporting attitudes and was able to get as far as Seattle before his crime was discovered. — Robert Benchley

The ideal age for a boy to own a dog is between forty-five and fifty. — Robert Benchley

Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime of humorless people. — Robert Benchley

The discovery of phobias by psychiatrists has done much to clear the atmosphere. Whereas in the old days a person would say: 'Let's get the heck out of here!' today she says: 'Let's get the heck out of here! I've got claustrophobia. — Robert Benchley

Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at the moment. — Robert Benchley

I don't trust a bank that would lend money to such a poor risk. — Robert Benchley

Benchley and I had an office in the old Life magazine that was so tiny, if it were an inch smaller it would have been adultery. — Dorothy Parker

I don't believe in blaming inanimate objects for anything. — Peter Benchley

If Robert Benchley and Dorothy Parker had teamed up to write epic fantasy, something like Split Heirs might have resulted. — John DeChancie

The fish was an enemy. It had come upon the community and killed two men, a woman, and a child. The people of Amity would demand the death of the fish. They would need to see it dead before they could feel secure enough to resume their normal lives. — Peter Benchley

I have been told by hospital authorities that more copies of my works are left behind by departing patients than those of any other author. — Robert Benchley

We do not just fear our predators, we are transfixed by them. We are prone to weave stories and fables and chat endlessly about them. — Peter Benchley

We are already perilously close to killing off the top of the oceanic food chain - with catastrophic consequences that we can't begin to imagine. Let us not, in the heat of anger, reduce the already devastated population of great white sharks by one more member. — Peter Benchley

Almost any shark, three or four feet long, could kill a human being if it chose to do it. It could make you bleed to death. But they don't. — Peter Benchley

No, the shark in an updated JAWS could not be the villain; it would have to be written as the victim, for, worldwide, sharks are much more the oppressed than the oppressors. — Peter Benchley

The pencil sharpener is about as far as I have ever got in operating a complicated piece of machinery with any success. — Robert Benchley