Jaws Quotes
"The great fish moved silently through the night water, propelled by short sweeps of its crescent tail."
"Once stopped, it would sink to the bottom and die of anoxia."
"All that separated sea from shore was a long, straight stretch of beach -- so white that it shone."
"First a swim," said the woman, "to clear your head."
"The water was colder than the night air, for it was only mid-June."
"The fish sensed a change in the sea's rhythm."
"The sweeps of its tail quickened, thrusting the giant body forward with a speed that agitated the tiny phosphorescent animals in the water."
"The fish smelled her now, and the vibrations -- erratic and sharp -- signaled distress."
"For the first time, the woman felt fear, though she did not know why."
"Adrenaline shot through her trunk and her limbs, generating a tingling heat and urging her to swim faster."
"The fish had moved away. It swallowed the woman's limb without chewing."
"The fish, with the woman's body in its mouth, smashed down on the water with a thunderous splash."
"The man awoke, shivering in the early morning cold."
"There's something crazy and evil and uncontrollable about them."
"The fish's head drove the raft out of the water."
"His breath squeezed out of his chest in short bursts."
"It came off in my hand. The fish must have chewed fight through it, all but a little bit of skin."
"The past always seems better when you look back on it than it did at the time."
"The present never looks as good as it will in the future."
"It's depressing if you spend too much time reliving old joys."
"If you keep it with you you'll be safe from shark bite."
"Sharks have everything a scientist dreams of."
"They're beautiful -- God, how beautiful they are!"
"Sharks aren't very bright, Chief. They exist on instinct and impulse."
"There's nothing in the sea this fish would fear."
"First of all, nobody's seen the fish in a week."
"It's a calculated risk, but I think -- we think -- it's worth taking."
"The only way he can get out without being ruined is if the market turns around and the prices go up."
"I swear to you, Martin, if I had any idea how far this would go, I'd never have gotten into it."
"I'm going to open the beaches for the Fourth."
"You mean we drove all the way out here to see this shark and he's gone?"
"I'm the chief of police in this town. I don't know who you are, or who you think you are, but you don't march onto a private beach in Amity and start behaving like a bum."
"It's just after all that goddam traffic and the kids screaming in my ear, I thought at least we'd get a look at the shark. That's what we come all the way out here for."
"I never seen anything like it. We must have got thirty, forty tarpon -- big tarpon -- in four nights' fishing."
"I suppose I should be grateful," he said. "At least he didn't attack the boat."
"It's like a locomotive with a mouth full of butcher knives."
"A sensible man knows his limits. That's beyond your limits."
"You can bitch and moan all you want. But don't tell Quint he can't catch a few fish to help him make a living."
"I never wanted to hurt anybody. I hope you believe that."
"You're from a good family. You know all the people I had to fight to get to know."
"It's unique, at least in this hemisphere. And even though people have filmed great whites before, no one's ever filmed a twenty-foot white swimming in the open ocean. Never."
"It's foolishness, that's why. A sensible man knows his limits."
"When people charter my boat, I don't ask questions about them."
"Like he meant to be mean. Like he knew what he was doing."
"After a while you get to know everything they can do."
"The only thing that'd save you would be God."
"What about me and the children? Do you want to get killed?"
"No, it's a feeling. There's not always a why to these things."
"Kept from sinking into the deep by the bobbing barrels."