Jaws

by Peter Benchley

I don’t know how much I can accomplish—I don’t know how much anyone can accomplish

Hendricks let the phone ring until Miss Dixie castrated the first of her attackers with a linoleum knife she had secreted in her hair.

and the vacationing bankers and brokers and lawyers who stopped in to discuss their various plans for keeping Amity a pristine and exclusive summer colony.

he was on the unfortunate side of forty and had already lived more than half his life.

of chances missed and lives that could have

They had been conditioned to believe (or, if not to believe, to sense) that the world was really quite irrelevant to them. And they were right. Nothing

and a short-sleeved shirt with an alligator emblem stitched to the left breast, which caused Brody to take an instant, instinctive dislike to the man.

I don’t like to see things die for people’s amusement.” Quint snickered, and Hooper said, “Do you?”

He felt serene. It was the pervasive sense of freedom and ease that he always felt when he dived. He was alone in the blue silence speckled with shafts of sunlight that danced through the water. The only sounds were those he made breathing—a deep, hollow noise as he breathed in, a soft thudding of bubbles as he exhaled. He held his breath, and the silence was complete.