Peter Benchley Quotes

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? Not lack of food. If there's enough down there to support whales, there's enough to support sharks that big. Just because we've never seen a hundred-foot white doesn't mean they couldn't exist. They'd have no reason to come to the surface. All their food would be way down in the deep. A dead one wouldn't float to shore, because they don't have flotation bladders. Can you imagine what a hundred-foot white would look like? Can you imagine what it could do, what kind of power it would have?It would be like a locomotive with a mouth full of butcher knives. ~ Peter Benchley

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. ~ Peter Benchley

The great fish moved silently through the night water. ~ Peter Benchley

Ellen Brody:
Wanna get drunk and fool around?

Brody:
Oh Yeah. ~ Peter Benchley

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

odds might be good, but the stakes were prohibitively high. He ~ Peter Benchley

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

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. ~ Peter Benchley

If you take away the predators in the prairies and the national parks, you suddenly have an explosion of elk, and then you have a lack of the food source for the elk, so they strip all the ground bare and that takes away the cover, on and on and on and on. The whole food chain is disrupted. ~ Peter Benchley

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

We're going to need a bigger boat. ~ Peter Benchley

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

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

It was a funny thing, he thought, that when you live all your life in a place, you almost never do the things that tourists go there to do - like walk on the beach or go swimming in the ocean. He couldn't remember the last time he went swimming. He wasn't even sure he still owned a bathing suit. It was like something he had heard about New York - that half the people who live in the city never go to the top of the Empire State Building or visit the Statue of Liberty. ~ Peter Benchley

I dive as much as I can. ~ Peter Benchley

ideologues of every stripe, as well as folks with interests economic, political, or personal, can interpret data and statistics to suit their own purposes... ~ Peter Benchley

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.' ~ Peter Benchley

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

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

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

You could start now, and spend another forty years learning about the sea without running out of new things to know. ~ Peter Benchley

Come up fish. Come to Quint. ~ Peter Benchley

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

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

You're gonna need a bigger boat. ~ Peter Benchley

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

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. ~ Peter Benchley

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

God isn't going to scribble across the sky. The shark is gone. ~ Peter Benchley

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

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

There was a minor burst of macho nuttiness after 'Jaws' came out, in which people would go off in shark tournaments and come back holding the bloody heads of these animals and say, 'Look what I did.' But they've been doing that for hundreds of thousands of years anyway. ~ Peter Benchley

Fascinations breeds preparedness, and preparedness, survival. ~ Peter Benchley

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

It is not that I don't have a fear of sharks, it is that I have a respect for them, so that I know any more than if I were to go into the jungle, I would have a fear of tigers, that I would try to lower the odds. ~ Peter Benchley

To fantasies', he said. 'Tell me about yours.' His eyes were a bright, liquid blue, and his lips were parted in a half smile. ~ Peter Benchley

If you're young and wild, you tend to believe your clippings. One day you're Hemingway. The next day you're nothing. ~ Peter Benchley

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

He awoke at five, to the whine of the television test pattern, turned off the set, and listened for the wind. It had moderated and seemed to be coming from a different quarter, but it still carried rain. He debated calling Quint, but thought, no, no use: we'll be going even if this blows up into a gale. He went upstairs and quietly dressed. Before he left the bedroom, he looked at Ellen, who had a frown on her sleeping face. "I do love you, you know," he whispered, and he kissed her brow. He started down the stairs and then, impulsively, went and looked in the boys' bedrooms. They were all asleep. ~ Peter Benchley

What had once seemed shallow and tedious now loomed in memory like paradise. ~ 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

We are already perilously close to killing off the top of the oceanic food chain - with catastrophic consequences that we can't begin to imagine. Let us not, in the heat of anger, reduce the already devastated population of great white sharks by one more member. ~ Peter Benchley

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. ~ Peter Benchley

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

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

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

Brody felt a shimmy of fear skitter up his back. He was a very poor swimmer, and the prospect of being on top of - let alone in - water above his head give him what his mother used to call the wimwams: sweaty palms, a persistent need to swallow, and a ache in his stomach - essentially the sensation some people feel about flying. In Brody's dreams, deep water was populated by slimy, savage things that rose from below and shredded his flesh, by demons that cackled and moaned. ~ Peter Benchley

Oceanography is a terrific career because gradually we seem to be coming around to realize that we had better become as acquainted with the seventy percent of our planet that is covered by water as we are with the dark side of the moon. ~ Peter Benchley

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

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

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. ~ Peter Benchley

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

Don't go into the water if you're bleeding - at all, from anything, anywhere on your body. ~ Peter Benchley

I hope that 'Jaws' will have brought sharks into the public interest at a time when we desperately need to reevaluate our care for the environment. ~ Peter Benchley

I don't think there's such a thing as an unprovoked shark attack. ~ Peter Benchley

wherever they live, travel, hike, swim, fish, dive, kayak, or trek, they risk being confronted by something capable of doing them in with tooth, fang, claw, jaw, or stinger, and yet there is no public clamor to eradicate any animal because of the peril it poses to the human population. australians have learned to coexist in relative peace with nearly everything, and when occasionally a human life is lost to an animal, the public usually reacts philosophically. ~ Peter Benchley

Finance epitomizes indefinite thinking because it's the only way to make money when you have no idea how to create wealth. ~ Peter Thiel

Love suffers far more for the pains of the beloved than for its own pains. ~ Peter Kreeft

Anyone who thinks they can save the world is both wrong and dangerous ~ Peter Matthiessen

They had sat here, in this very room, their knees almost touching, and there had been a sense of almost breathless discovery, and while they had not become lovers everything was laid out, like a feast, and they were merely arranging the table decorations and putting out the place names, the final little touches, so that when the feast began it would have been a splendid thing, not only satisfying to the baser appetites but to the higher senses. ~ Peter Carey

I am more the inspirational type of speller. I work on hunches rather than mere facts, and the result is sometimes open to criticism by purists. ~ Robert Benchley

Visigothic kings ~ Peter Tyler

Invest in businesses any idiot could run, because someday one will. ~ Peter Lynch

My only solution for the problem of habitual accidents is to stay in bed all day. Even then, there is always the chance that you will fall out. ~ Robert Benchley

There is no excuse for keeping wild animals in amusement parks or circuses. Until our governments take action, we should avoid supporting places where captive wild animals perform for our amusement. If the public will not pay to see them, the businesses that profit from keeping animals captive will not be able to continue. ~ Peter Singer

If I'm not at my study by 10:00, 10:30, forget it, I can't write a word. ~ Peter O'Toole

If you do not fling old ideas out of your mind, you cannot give birth to new ones. ~ Peter Deunov

Religion is the human attitude towards a sacred order that includes within it all being-human or otherwise-i.e., belief in a cosmos, the meaning of which both includes and transcends man. ~ Peter L. Berger

There's a common saying that everybody deep at heart loves their mother, except sometimes we decide our actual mothers don't measure up. And so we look for a replacement. ~ Peter Sagal

Jack stepped onstage dressed in jeans, sneakers, and a T-shirt.
"I'm the handsome Butterboy," Jack announced. "I'm the queen's soul mate. I just don't know it yet because I'm emotionally immature. Sorry, Conner."
Conner was so embarrassed, he sank into his seat and covered his face with his backpack. Trollbella was sporting a wide grin - this was her favorite part of the show. Red struck a theatrical pose with her hands over her heart.
"Be still my heart, for I am in love!" Red announced.
"Now, Peter!" Trollbella whispered.
Peter soared out from backstage and flew in circles over the audience. The children laughed and clapped - they reached up and tried to touch him. Conner was irritated by how much they were enjoying the show.
"Hello, Butterboy!" Red said to Jack. "Would you like to be my king and rule the trolls and goblins with me? Oh, how happy we will be together!"
"Oh boy, that sounds wonderful!" Jack said. "How lucky I am to be loved by such a beautiful and brilliant troll queen. I will never find someone like her ever again - nope, not once, no how, no way, not going to happen! I want to be with Trollbella for all eternity!"
"I never said that!" Conner shouted from his seat. "She's making this up! ~ Chris Colfer

To make a living is no longer enough. Work also has to make a life. ~ Peter Drucker

And within two weeks, Peter Foo was already proven right. Business for the firm expanded in leaps & bounds as both old & new clients wanted to meet the lovely slave girl that he kept naked in his penthouse & to partake of the ambrosial Nectar that she served. So much so that the three million dollars that he had paid for her was fully recovered out of profits. And new orders that flooded the firm showed that his initial investment on the girl would increase in value tenfold within a year.
He had therefore acquired the lovely slave girl, Briseis,for free. And that was why Peter Foo was likened by the Directors to Zeus/Jupiter, the King of the Gods.[MMT] ~ Nicholas Chong

We are seeing reports that NATO's sending early warning radar planes and German military personnel to Turkey. That might reduce the chances of another incident like this jet shoot down. And obviously both NATO and the U.S. are pressing their ally Turkey to urgently deescalate the situation. ~ Peter Kenyon

One can either work or meet. One cannot do both at the same time. ~ Peter Drucker

The Eucharist began at Bethlehem in Mary's arms. It was she who brought to humanity the Bread for which it was famishing, and which alone can nourish it. She it was who took care of that Bread for us. It was she who nourished the Lamb whose life-giving Flesh we feed upon ~ Peter Julian Eymard

Together we raced into the jungle, leaving Justin Bieber far behind. ~ Peter Lerangis

Have faith that when bad things happen to you, I belief in an after life, it is better to suffer here on Earth than what awaits you. That is why I pray for pain, and I get it. I do. ~ Peter Steele

... a country where we seldom understand that we must be prepared to fight for issues bigger than an umpire's decision at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. ~ Peter Carey

John saw only the linen cloths. He, Peter, also saw the linen cloths because we [Gentiles] do not reject the Old Testament, for as Luke says, "Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures" (Lk 24:45). But in addition Peter saw the napkin which had been on his head: "The head of Christ is God" (1 Cor 11:3). Thus to see the napkin which had been on the head of Jesus is to have faith in the divinity of Christ, which the Jews refused to accept. This napkin is described as not lying with the linen cloths, and rolled up, having a place by itself, because the divinity of Christ is covered over, and it is apart from every creature because of its excellence: "God who is over all be blessed for ever" (Rom 9:5); "Truly, you art a God who hides yourself" (Is 45:15). ~ Thomas Aquinas

The problem, for me, with the writing programs is that they produce a terrible uniformity of product. ~ Peter Davison

I have wanted to run my own business since my time at Clitheroe grammar school. I remember thinking if I could get a penny from everyone in Britain, I would earn £208,000 a year. ~ Peter Hargreaves

I think we're all fans of Twilight. Being in this Saga, you become a fan. I have the whole DVD collection at home. I put it on every day and watch it at least five times a day. Is that weird? ~ Peter Facinelli

The core leadership strategy is simple: be a model. ~ Peter M. Senge

...the modern bias in contemporary Western scholarship (which has spread to the rest of the world as well) insists upon focusing all attention on the formation of the modern world and 'modernity.' By directing attention to a time period rather than to a region, Western scholars can place the West at the center of any discussion, and subordinate backward Asia to Western history, without explicitly condemning Asian cultures and polities or arguing for a narrowly Eurocentric view of the world. Nevertheless, modern history is effectively a racist pursuit that not only elevates white Westerners above all others, but also actively denigrates Asian history. ~ Peter A. Lorge

Peter will have a place in this brotherhood forever. ~ Tom Brokaw

What Google did in Web 1.0 was take a feature, which was search, and built an entire business around that utility. In Web 2.0, Twitter took a feature, which is sharing, and built a utility that allowed people to do that on a massive scale. ~ Peter Fenton