The ocean is the only alien and potentially hostile environment on the planet into which we tend to venture without thinking about the animals that live there, how they behave, how they support themselves, and how they perceive us. I know of no one who would set off into the jungles of Malaysia armed only with a bathing suit, a tube of suntan cream, and a book, and yet that's precisely how we approach the oceans.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water.

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.

You're gonna need a bigger boat.

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.

Writing is sweat and drudgery most of the time. And you have to love it in order to endure the solitude and the discipline.

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