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I guess I'm a hopeful optimist, because to be a pessimist is to be suicidal.

Peter Benchley

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Peter Benchley
Age: 65 †
Born: 1940
Born: May 8
Died: 2006
Died: February 12
Author
Journalist
Novelist
Prosaist
Screenwriter
Writer
New York City
New York
Peter Bradford Benchley
Pessimist
Suicidal
Optimist
Anticipation
Hopeful
Suicide
Guess

More quotes by Peter Benchley

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I don't believe in blaming inanimate objects for anything.
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I believe implicitly that every young man in the world is fascinated with either sharks or dinosaurs.
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You're gonna need a bigger boat.
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Twenty-five years ago nobody knew much about white sharks.
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Without the oceans there would be no life on Earth.
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Fascinations breeds preparedness, and preparedness, survival.
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Since writing JAWS, I've been lucky enough to do close to forty television shows about wildlife in the oceans, and yes, I have been attacked by sea creatures once in a while.
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Look, Chief, you can't go off half-cocked looking for vengeance against a fish. That shark isn't evil. It's not a murderer. It's just obeying its own instincts. Trying to get retribution against a fish is crazy.
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I read very widely, both non-fiction and fiction, so I don't think there's a single writer who influences me.
Peter Benchley
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Writing is sweat and drudgery most of the time. And you have to love it in order to endure the solitude and the discipline.
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If man doesn't learn to treat the oceans and the rain forest with respect, man will become extinct.
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He would have lied to himself as facilely as an alcoholic lies to himself to justify the 10 a.m. tumbler of vodka : it may be early here, but in Baghdad it's almost evening.
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The fish was an enemy. It had come upon the community and killed two men, a woman, and a child. The people of Amity would demand the death of the fish. They would need to see it dead before they could feel secure enough to resume their normal lives.
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Oceanography is a terrific career because gradually we seem to be coming around to realize that we had better become as acquainted with the seventy percent of our planet that is covered by water as we are with the dark side of the moon.
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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.
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There's nothing in the sea this fish would fear. Other fish run from bigger things. That's their instinct. But this fish doesn't run from anything. He doesn't fear.
Peter Benchley
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I know now that the mythic monster I created was largely a fiction.
Peter Benchley
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Reputations rise and fall almost as regularly as the tides.
Peter Benchley