Peter Benchley > Quotes

“You're gonna need a bigger boat.”
― Peter Benchley

“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, Jaws

“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, Jaws

“Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water...”
― Peter Benchley, Jaws

“The great fish moved silently through the night water.”
― Peter Benchley, Jaws

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

“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.”
― Peter Benchley, Jaws

“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.”
― Peter Benchley, Jaws

“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, Jaws

“...pot roast. It could be reheated. It might
taste like a sneaker, but it would be warm.”
― Peter Benchley, Jaws

“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, Jaws

“What had once seemed shallow and tedious now loomed in memory like paradise.”
― Peter Benchley, Jaws

“Sharks are like ax-murderers, Martin. People react to them with their guts. There’s something crazy and evil and uncontrollable about them.”
― Peter Benchley, Jaws

“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, Jaws

“Any weapon's only as good as the man using it, and a good man can make a good weapon out of most anything.”
― Peter Benchley, The Deep

“A terrible, painful sadness clutched at Ellen. More than ever before, she felt that her life—the best part of it, at least, the part that was fresh and fun—was behind her. Recognizing the sensation made her feel guilty, for she read it as proof that she was an unsatisfactory mother, an unsatisfied wife. She hated her life, and hated herself for hating it. She thought of a line from a song Billy played on the stereo: “I’d trade all my tomorrows for a single yesterday.”
― Peter Benchley, Jaws

“You're gonna need a bigger boat”
― Peter Benchley

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

“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.”
― Peter Benchley, Jaws

“A man dies, girl, he isn't any more, least not down here. Respect and all that crap doesn't deserve the dead; it just makes the living feel better. The dead one, maybe he is somewhere else-- maybe all he needs to be somewhere else is to believe he will be somewhere else. I won't deny a man his belief, and I don't know any more'n you about souls and all that stuff. But I know this: Speaking good or bad about something that isn't anymore is a bloody waste of time. I can't feature Saint Peter sitting up there saying: 'Hey, Adam, there's folks bad-mouthing you down there. What'd you do to merit that?”
― Peter Benchley, The Deep

“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

“That's the only hitch in learning: it's humbling. The more you learn, the more you realize how little you know. Anyway, all that's a long way around saying that it's crazy to do things just to prove you can do 'em. The more you learn, the more you'll find yourself doing things you never thought you could do in a million years.”
― Peter Benchley

“A quick, sharp laugh from Quint broke the thread of tension. "What a pair of
assholes," he said. "I seen that coming since you came aboard this morning.”
― Peter Benchley, Jaws

“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, Jaws

“God isn't going to scribble across the sky, "The shark is gone.”
― Peter Benchley, Jaws

“Cuando don Marinero Bisoño sale de Miami rumbo a las Bahamas, a lo mejor con un atlas como carta de navegación -y le aseguro que algunos de esos idiotas lo hacen-, se convierte en un accidente en busca de un lugar donde ocurrir.”
― Peter Benchley, The Island

“Come up fish. Come to Quint.”
― Peter Benchley, Jaws

“Hooper ladled chum, which sounded to Brody, every time it hit the water, like diarrhea.”
― Peter Benchley, Jaws

“seen Blue Water, White Death, the 1971 feature film that, for me, remains the finest documentary ever made about sharks.”
― Peter Benchley, Jaws

“I guess I'm a hopeful optimist, because to be a pessimist is to be suicidal.”
― Peter Benchley