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 oppres….

The ocean is the only alien and potentially hostile environment on the planet into which we tend to venture without thinking about the animals that l….

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….

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 c….

Fascinations breeds preparedness, and preparedness, survival..

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..

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

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

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

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

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. H….

I believe implicitly that every young man in the world is fascinated with either sharks or dinosaurs..

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

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

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

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 p….

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 fis….

Sharks have everything a scientist dreams of. They're beautiful―God, how beautiful they are! They're like an impossibly perfect piece of machinery. T….

He would have lied to himself as facilely as an alcoholic lies to himself to justify the 10 a.m. tumbler of vodka : it may be early here, but in Bagh….

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

I dive as much as I can..