Jaws

by Peter Benchley

a meatball hero,

one of the few advantages man has over other animals is the ability to choose the way to bring on his own death. Food may well kill me, but it’s also what has made life such a pleasure.

Besides, I’d rather go my way than end up in the belly of a shark.

I’m supposed to protect people around here, and if I can’t protect them from something, the least I can do is warn them that there is a danger.

the prospect of being on top of—let alone in—water above his head gave him what his mother used to call the wimwams:

Not the wimwams

“Shit, Harry, all you had to do was ask me,” said Brody. “I could have told you. You see, there’s this fish out there, and …”

“Sharks aren’t very bright, Chief. They exist on instinct and impulse.

But this fish doesn’t run from anything. He doesn’t know fear.

“No shark is going to try to eat you.” “Why not? If I go swimming I bet one would. Don’t sharks eat black people?”

“Canst thou draw out leviathan with a hook?”

“I can’t believe I ate the whole thing.”

“Well, you’ve certainly changed.” “I hope so. I’d hate to be nine all of my life.”

He yanked the metal tab and it broke off in his hand. “Fuck!” he said, and he threw the full can into the wastebasket and marched out of the room.

He spoke with the unmistakable accent of the Queens Borough New Yorker.

“Yours the only boat there?” “Only one. It’s called the Orca.”

told him he could give me the money and keep the publicity and try to spread it on a cracker for himself and his wife.”

Brody felt a chill, and he shuddered. “That was very strange,” he said, shaking his head. “He looked like he was grinning.”

“It’s beyond any man’s limits. A fish that big could eat that cage for breakfast.” “But would he? I don’t think so. I think he might bump it, might even mouth it, but I don’t think he’d seriously try to eat it.” “He would if he saw something as juicy as you inside.”

“I don’t think I’d like five thousand pounds of pissed-off dinosaur trying to eat me.”

“He got no manners,” Quint cackled. “Come on, you motherfucker. Come and get your due.”

Brody saw fever in Quint’s face—a heat that lit up his dark eyes, an intensity that drew his lips back from his teeth in a crooked smile, an anticipation that strummed the sinews in his neck and whitened his knuckles.

“Attack me, will you?” said Quint. “You’ll take no man with you, uppity fuck!”