Peter Benchley
Peter Benchley
Peter Bradford Benchleywas an American author. He wrote the novel Jaws and co-wrote its subsequent film adaptation with Carl Gottlieb. Several more of his works were also adapted for cinema, including The Deep, The Island, Beast, and White Shark...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth8 May 1940
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
believe next tend
If you're young and wild, you tend to believe your clippings. One day you're Hemingway. The next day you're nothing.
based life sends somebody stories
Ideas for stories come to me based on my life, so who knows? If somebody sends me to become an astronaut, that's what I'll end up writing.
based great written
Everything I've written is based on something that has happened to me or something that I know a great deal about.
We should be afraid of sharks half as much as sharks should be afraid of us.
fear invent mario responsibility
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.
shark unprovoked
I don't think there's such a thing as an unprovoked shark attack.
bare chain explosion food lack national predators source suddenly takes
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.
fear lower respect
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.
accident animal automobile bee bite butcher car death die execute human likely lord shark snake
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.
chance choose climb crocodiles enter forest river snakes swamp swim taking tiger visit walk
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.
endlessly fables fear prone stories
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.
enter happen provoke shark sharks territory time
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.
brought hope interest public reevaluate sharks time
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.
almost bleed chose death four human
Almost any shark, three or four feet long, could kill a human being if it chose to do it. It could make you bleed to death. But they don't.