Jaws Peter Benchley Quotes & Sayings

The boy's last - only - thought was that he had been punched in the stomach. The breath was driven from him in a sudden rush. He had no time to cry out, nor, had he had the time, would he have known what to cry, for he could not see the fish. The fish's head drove the raft out of the water. The jaws smashed together, engulfing head, arms, shoulders, trunk, pelvis, and most of the raft. Nearly half the fish had come clear of the water, and it slid forward and down in a belly-flopping motion, grinding the mass of flesh and bone and rubber. The boy's legs were severed at the hips, and they sank, spinning slowly, to the bottom. — Peter Benchley

Brody felt a shimmy of fear skitter up his back. He was a very poor swimmer, and the prospect of being on top of - let alone in - water above his head give him what his mother used to call the wimwams: sweaty palms, a persistent need to swallow, and a ache in his stomach - essentially the sensation some people feel about flying. In Brody's dreams, deep water was populated by slimy, savage things that rose from below and shredded his flesh, by demons that cackled and moaned. — Peter Benchley

Since writing JAWS, I've been lucky enough to do close to forty television shows about wildlife in the oceans, and yes, I have been attacked by sea creatures once in a while. — Peter Benchley

In a deeply tribal sense, we love our monsters, and I think that is the key to it right there. It is monsters; it is learning about them: it is both thrill and safety. You can think of them without being desperately afraid because they are not going to come into your living room and eat you. That is 'Jaws.' — Peter 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

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

Wombed in sin darkness I was too, made not begotten. By them, the man with my voice and my eyes and a ghost-woman with ashes on her breath. They clasped and sundered, did the coupler's will. — James Joyce

America, so far as her physical history is concerned, has been falsely denominated the New World. Hers was the first dry land lifted out of the waters, hers the first shore washed by the ocean that enveloped all the earth beside; and while Europe was represented only by islands rising here and there above the sea, America already stretched an unbroken line of land from Nova Scotia to the Far West. — Louis Agassiz

Waves crack with wicked fury against me ship's hull while ocean currents rage as the full moon rises o're the sea."
(Cutthroat's Omen: A Crimson Dawn) — John Phillips

The Holy Spirit has a way of His own to say much in few words. — Martin Luther

She nodded, grabbed her purse out of the drawer and skedaddled, walking like she was on a catwalk, one foot in front of the other, her ass swaying under the skirt of her expensive, tailored suit.
Bitch. I thought again, watching her go.
"No comparison," Luke said after the door closed behind Dawn and I turned to him.
"Excuse me?"
"Dawn's a man eater. You're not. No comparison," Luke answered and I didn't know how to take that.
"Is that good?"
The half-smile came back.
"Most men prefer to do the eating."
Holy fucking cow. — Kristen Ashley

The past always seems better when you look back on it than it did at the time. And the present never looks as good as it will in the future. — Peter Benchley

He felt at once betrayed and betrayer, deceived and deceiver. He was a criminal forced into crime, an unwilling whore. — Peter Benchley

Cereal is food, sort of. It tastes grainy, easy and light, with a hint of false fruitiness. It tastes the way America feels. — Gary Shteyngart

Instead of involving themselves in an all-out attempt to stamp out racism from their white society, liberals waste a lot of time trying to prove to as many blacks as they can find that they are liberal. — Steve Biko

It seems to me self-evident that if you have a life, things happen in it, and certain things do change; certain things end. People you know die. — Jonathan Franzen

To fantasies', he said. 'Tell me about yours.' His eyes were a bright, liquid blue, and his lips were parted in a half smile. — Peter Benchley

There's nothing in the sea this fish would fear. Other fish run from bigger things. That's their instinct. But this fish doesn't run from anything. He doesn't fear. — Peter Benchley

If you have enough people sitting around telling you you're wonderful, then you start believing you're fabulous, then someone tells you you stink and you believe that too! — Angelina Jolie

You're gonna need a bigger boat. — 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

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

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

Let me ... warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party. — George Washington

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

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