Jaws Quotes

“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

“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

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

“The great fish moved silently through the night water.”
― 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

“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

“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

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

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

“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

“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

“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

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

“mean anything.” She seemed subdued, sad.”
― 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

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

“The young man was tall and slim. He wore sandals and a bathing suit and a short-sleeved shirt with an alligator emblem stitched to the left breast, which caused Brody to take an instant, instinctive dislike to the man. In his adolescence Brody had thought of those shirts as badges of wealth and position. All the summer people wore them. Brody badgered his mother until she bought him one—“a two-dollar shirt with a six-dollar lizard on it,” she said.”
― Peter Benchley, Jaws

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

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

“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

“With knowledge accumulated from dozens of expeditions and hundreds of dives and countless encounters with sharks of many kinds came the realization that I could never write Jaws today. I could never demonize an animal, especially not an animal that is much older and much more successful in its habitat than man is, has been, or ever will be, an animal that is vitally necessary for the balance of nature in the sea, and an animal that we may—if we don’t change our destructive behaviors—extinguish from the face of the earth.”
― Peter Benchley, Jaws

“don’t mind. I just thought you might not want to.” The three men”
― Peter Benchley, Jaws

“odds might be good, but the stakes were prohibitively high. He”
― Peter Benchley, Jaws

“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, Jaws

“Maybe. Maybe not. Look, the Latin name for this fish is Carcharodon carcharias, okay? The closest ancestor we can find for it is something called Carcharodon megalodon, a fish that existed maybe thirty or forty thousand years ago. We have fossil teeth from megalodon. They’re six inches long. That would put the fish at between eighty and a hundred feet. And the teeth are exactly like the teeth you see in great whites today. What I’m getting at is, suppose the two fish are really one species. What’s to say megalodon is really extinct? Why should it be?”
― Peter Benchley, Jaws

“In a way, sharks are like tornadoes. they touch down here, but not there. they wipe out this house but suddenly veer away and miss the house next door.”
― Peter Benchley, Jaws