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

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.

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

The earth you subdue becomes your kingdom

How do you have to live, I wondered, to be in harmony with what you honestly think?

To the extent that one is responsible for one's life, one is alone.

I should be glad if I could flatter myself that I came as near the central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes.

When you feel good is when you're not afraid to feel the worst.

Real men change diapers!

There is no reason for amazement: surely one always knew that cultures decay, and life's end is death.

I was very poor. As a child my dream was to have a leather football.

No thought lives in your head rent-free.

We cannot conquer fate and necessity, yet we can yield to them in such a manner as to be greater than if we could.