Close to Shore Quotes

“Exactly what the great white eats in an emergency is a mystery ichthyologists solved by the late twentieth century after decades of investigation: whatever it wishes.”
― Michael Capuzzo, Close to Shore: The Terrifying Shark Attacks of 1916

“In 1974, Peter Benchley invoked the 1916 shark as the role model for his fictional white shark in Jaws. By”
― Michael Capuzzo, Close to Shore: The Terrifying Shark Attacks of 1916

“The giant fish devours the living and the dead and the inanimate. Bottles, tin cans, cuckoo clocks, truck tires, a whole sheep, an intact Newfoundland dog with its collar on, have all been taken from the stomach of white.”
― Michael Capuzzo, Close to Shore: The Terrifying Shark Attacks of 1916

“The fish appeared gray and white and moved with the precision and trajectory of an enormous bullet, a shot somehow fired in slow motion through the medium of the sea, moving with a purity and suppleness that were eerily beautiful.”
― Michael Capuzzo, Close to Shore: The Terrifying Shark Attacks of 1916

“In a study of great white shark behavior by George Burgess and Matthew Callahan using data from the International Shark Attack File, no other humans were within ten feet of the victim in 85 percent of the attacks.”
― Michael Capuzzo, Close to Shore: The Terrifying Shark Attacks of 1916

“He was excited by his generation's idealistic dreams of the future, and particularly enjoyed a fanciful poem written by one of his prep school classmates in 1906, titled “In 1999”: Father goes to the office In his new bi-aeroplane And talks by wireless telephone To Uncle John—in Spain Mother goes a-shopping She buys things more or less And has them sent home C.O.D. Via “Monorail Express.” Sister goes a-calling She stays here and there a while And discusses with her many friends The latest Martian style And when her calling list is through She finds a library nook And there with great enjoyment hears A new self-reading book.”
― Michael Capuzzo, Close to Shore: The Terrifying Shark Attacks of 1916

“The newspapers this year were campaigning for a “safe and sane” Fourth. One hundred and eighty-five Philadelphians had been seriously injured in 1915 by fireworks, cannons, firearms, gunpowder, torpedoes, and toy pistols.”
― Michael Capuzzo, Close to Shore: The Terrifying Shark Attacks of 1916

“If any man in the Gilded Age could best the shark, it would be a man who possessed Vanderbilt's wealth and Roosevelt's vigor and an unsurpassed reputation for prowess at sea. Such a man was Hermann Oelrichs.”
― Michael Capuzzo, Close to Shore: The Terrifying Shark Attacks of 1916

“Norris expressed it best: “Vitality is the thing after all. The United States in this year of grace 1902 does not want and need Scholars, but Men.”
― Michael Capuzzo, Close to Shore: The Terrifying Shark Attacks of 1916

“in Baltimore Harbor. While the U-boat haunted Americans”
― Michael Capuzzo, Close to Shore: The Terrifying Shark Attacks of 1916

“[Lucas] was most famous for his short, best-selling book on fossils, "Animals of the Past: An Account of Some of the Creatures of the Ancient World", in which he showed his gift for enlivening the driest science. Apologizing for using Latin scientific names, he wrote: 'The reader may perhaps sympathize with the old lady who said the discovery of all these strange animals did not surprise her so much as the fact that anyone should know their names when they were found.”
― Michael Capuzzo, Close to Shore: The Terrifying Shark Attacks of 1916

“The beach was such a novel experience that most were completely unfamiliar with the health hazards—and risks to life and limb—it posed.” —Gideon Bosker and Lena Lencek,
The Beach: The History of Paradise on Earth”
― Michael Capuzzo, Close to Shore: The Terrifying Shark Attacks of 1916