Without the oceans there would be no life on Earth.
If man doesn't learn to treat the oceans and the rain forest with respect, man will become extinct.
We provoke a shark every time we enter the water where sharks happen to be, for we forget: The ocean is not our territory - it's theirs.
If we choose to walk into a forest where a tiger lives, we are taking a chance. If we swim in a river where crocodiles live, we are taking a chance. If we visit the desert or climb a mountain or enter a swamp where snakes have managed to survive, we are taking a chance.
Sharks don't target human beings, and they certainly don't hold grudges.
Reputations rise and fall almost as regularly as the tides.
I've never been hurt by a sea creature, except for jellyfish and sea urchins.
I don't believe in blaming inanimate objects for anything.
Without sharks, you take away the apex predator of the ocean, and you destroy the entire food chain.
Writing is sweat and drudgery most of the time. And you have to love it in order to endure the solitude and the discipline.
We do not just fear our predators, we are transfixed by them. We are prone to weave stories and fables and chat endlessly about them.
I believe implicitly that every young man in the world is fascinated with either sharks or dinosaurs.
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.
Ideas for stories come to me based on my life, so who knows? If somebody sends me to become an astronaut, that's what I'll end up writing.
I don't think there's such a thing as an unprovoked shark attack.
Almost any shark, three or four feet long, could kill a human being if it chose to do it. It could make you bleed to death. But they don't.
Fascinations breeds preparedness, and preparedness, survival.
Because the Asian market is so omnivorous, it affects all the shark populations up and down the Central and South American coast, and to a certain extent the East Coast of the United States as well.
We are already perilously close to killing off the top of the oceanic food chain - with catastrophic consequences that we can't begin to imagine. Let us not, in the heat of anger, reduce the already devastated population of great white sharks by one more member.
It's hard to care deeply for something that might turn on you and eat you.
