Quotes from Peter Benchley

Everything I've written is based on something that has happened to me or something that I know a great deal about.

Twenty-five years ago nobody knew much about white sharks.

I didn't invent the fear of sharks; it's as old as mankind, and that - to take that responsibility would mean that Mario Puzo should take the blame for the Mafia.

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.

If man doesn't learn to treat the oceans and the rain forest with respect, man will become extinct.

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.'

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

Because the Asian market is so omnivorous, it affects all the shark populations up and down the Central and South American coast, and to a certain extent the East Coast of the United States as well.

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.

You're gonna need a bigger boat.

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.

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

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.

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

Sharks have everything a scientist dreams of. They're beautiful?God, how beautiful they are! They're like an impossibly perfect piece of machinery. They're as graceful as any bird. They're as mysterious as any animal on earth. No one knows for sure how long they live or what impulses?except for hunger?they respond to. There are more than two hundred and fifty species of shark, and everyone is different from every other one.

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. It's depressing if you spend too much time reliving old joys. You think you'll never have anything as good again.

The great fish moved silently through the night water.

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.

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. It's depressing if you spend too much time reliving the old joys. You think you'll never have anything as good again.

pot roast. It could be reheated. It might taste like a sneaker, but it would be warm.

Any weapon's only as good as the man using it, and a good man can make a good weapon out of most anything.

Come up fish. Come to Quint.

Hooper ladled chum, which sounded to Brody, every time it hit the water, like diarrhea.

Sharks are like ax-murderers, Martin. People react to them with their guts. There's something crazy and evil and uncontrollable about them.