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.

Without sharks, you take away the apex predator of the ocean, and you destroy the entire food chain

You're gonna need a bigger boat.

Sharks don't target human beings, and they certainly don't hold grudges.

The great fish moved silently through the night water.

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.

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.