Quotes by Peter Benchley

Sharks have everything a scientist dreams of. Theyre beautiful―God, how beautiful they are! Theyre like an impossibly perfect piece of machinery. Theyre as graceful as any bird. Theyre 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.

Theres nothing in the sea this fish would fear. Other fish run from bigger things. Thats their instinct. But this fish doesnt run from anything. He doesnt fear.

God isnt going to scribble across the sky. The shark is gone.

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.

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. Its depressing if you spend too much time reliving old joys. You think youll never have anything as good again.

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

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

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

Lifes full of chances to hurt yourself or someone else.

It is not that I dont 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.

If man doesnt learn to treat the oceans and the rain forest with respect, man will become extinct.

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.

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

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

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

If we choose to walk into a forest where a tiger lives, we are taking a chance. If we swim in a river where crocodiles live, we are taking a chance. If we visit the desert or climb a mountain or enter a swamp where snakes have managed to survive, we are taking a chance.

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.

Without the oceans there would be no life on Earth.

“Sharks have everything a scientist dreams of. Theyre beautiful―God, how beautiful they are! Theyre like an impossibly perfect piece of machinery. Theyre as graceful as any bird. Theyre 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.”