Jaws

by Peter Benchley

Pain and panic struck together.

a beacon as clear and true as a lighthouse on a cloudless night.

Sharks are like axe-murderers, Martin. People react to them with their guts.

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.

The past – like a bird long locked in a cage and suddenly released – was flying at her, swirling around her head, showering her with longing.

‘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. It’s depressing if you spend too much time reliving old joys. You think you’ll never have anything as good again.’

Yesterdays were gone, spinning ever farther away down a shaft that had no bottom. None of the richness, none of the delight, could ever be retrieved.

‘I’ll tell you what, Hooper. At this point, if someone came in here and said he was Superman and he could piss that shark away from here, I’d say fine and dandy. I’d even hold his dick for him.’

‘Hey, Hooper,’ said Quint, ‘do you think you can stop the fairy tales and start throwing chum overboard? I’d kind of like to catch a fish.’

All we can do is wait until God or nature or whatever the hell is doing this to us decides we’ve had enough. It’s out of man’s hands.’

They seemed as dark and bottomless as the eye of the fish.

It was a kind of freedom, a freedom from the mist of death.