Peter Benchley Quotes

I've never been hurt by a sea creature, except for jellyfish and sea urchins.

I believe implicitly that every young man in the world is fascinated with either sharks or dinosaurs.

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.

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

You're gonna need a bigger boat.

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.

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

Sharks don't target human beings, and they certainly don't hold grudges.

Reputations rise and fall almost as regularly as the tides.

Writing is sweat and drudgery most of the time. And you have to love it in order to endure the solitude and the discipline.

Without sharks, you take away the apex predator of the ocean, and you destroy the entire food chain

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.

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.

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

I'm a babe in the woods when it comes to the Internet.

I read very widely, both non-fiction and fiction, so I don't think there's a single writer who influences me.

Without the oceans there would be no life on Earth.

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.

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

I dive as much as I can.

The great fish moved silently through the night water.

Fascinations breeds preparedness, and preparedness, survival.

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

I guess I'm a hopeful optimist, because to be a pessimist is to be suicidal.

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.

We provoke a shark every time we enter the water where sharks happen to be, for we forget: The ocean is not our territory - it's theirs.

Without sharks, you take away the apex predator of the ocean, and you destroy the entire food chain.

Life's full of chances to hurt yourself or someone else.

What was it? What could it--His last thought was surprise.

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

God isn't going to scribble across the sky. "The shark is gone.