Benchley Quotes

paper-pushers can't figure me out. all they understand is bullshit and politics, which amounts to the same thing. — Peter Benchley

The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him. — Robert Benchley

It is rather to be chosen than great riches, unless I have omitted something from the quotation. — Robert Benchley

Who said time machines haven't been built yet? They already exist. They're called books — Robert Benchley

don't mind. I just thought you might not want to." The three men — Peter Benchley

The biggest obstacle to professional writing is the necessity for changing a typewriter ribbon. — Robert Benchley

If Robert Benchley and Dorothy Parker had teamed up to write epic fantasy, something like Split Heirs might have resulted. — John DeChancie

I don't trust a bank that would lend money to such a poor risk. — Robert Benchley

A great many people have come up to me and asked how I manage to get so much work done and still keep looking so dissipated. — Robert Benchley

You're gonna need a bigger boat. — Peter Benchley

I've never been hurt by a sea creature, except for jellyfish and sea urchins. — Peter Benchley

If you're young and wild, you tend to believe your clippings. One day you're Hemingway. The next day you're nothing. — Peter Benchley

Anyone who tries to keep track of what is happening in China is going to end up by wearing all the skin of his left ear from twirling around on it. — Robert Benchley

A dog teaches a boy fidelity, perseverance, and to turn around three times before lying down. — Robert Benchley

There is probably no more obnoxious class of citizen, taken end for end, than the returning vacationist. — Robert Benchley

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

Nothing makes a man feel older than to hear a band coming up the street and not to have the impulse to rush downstairs and out on to the sidewalk. — Robert Benchley

God isn't going to scribble across the sky. The shark is gone. — Peter Benchley

odds might be good, but the stakes were prohibitively high. He — Peter Benchley

As for me, except for an occasional heart attack, I feel as young as I ever did. — Robert Benchley

One of the easiest forms of pretense to break down is the pretense of enthusiasm for exotic foods. Just bring on the exotic foods. — Robert Benchley

The most common of all antagonisms arises from a man's taking a seat beside you on the train, a seat to which he is completely entitled. — Robert Benchley

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. — Peter Benchley

Central Park is the grandiose symbol of the front yard each child in New York hasn't got. — Robert Benchley

Even nowadays a man can't step up and kill a woman without feeling just a bit unchivalrous. — Robert Benchley

She sleeps alone at last. — Robert Benchley

I am more the inspirational type of speller. I work on hunches rather than mere facts, and the result is sometimes open to criticism by purists. — Robert Benchley

It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous. — Robert Benchley

The free-lance writer is one who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps. — Robert Benchley

Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime of humorless people. — Robert Benchley

Drinking makes such fools of people, and people are such fools to begin with that it's compounding a felony. — Robert Benchley

Why don't you get out of that wet coat and into a dry martini? — Robert Benchley

If Mr. Einstein doesn't like the natural laws of the universe, let him go back to where he came from. — Robert Benchley

I do most of my work sitting down; that's where I shine. — Robert Benchley

In a house where there are small children the bathroom soon takes on the appearance of the Old Curiosity Shop. — Robert Benchley

Next to a shot of some good, habit-forming narcotic, there is nothing like travelling alone as a 'builder-upper. — Robert Benchley

Opera is when a guy gets stabbed in the back and, instead of bleeding, he sings. — Robert Benchley

I don't think there's such a thing as an unprovoked shark attack. — Peter Benchley

It's hard to care deeply for something that might turn on you and eat you. — Peter Benchley

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

Every boy should have two things: a dog and a mother who lets him have one — Robert Benchley

Robert Benchley has a style that is weak and lies down frequently to rest. — Max Eastman

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

mean anything." She seemed subdued, sad. — Peter Benchley

If Shakespeare were alive today and writing comedy for the movies, he would be the head-liner for the Mack Sennett studios. — Robert Benchley

If you look at eggs, you will see that each one is almost round but not quite ... Nature's way of distinguishing eggs from large golf balls. — Robert Benchley

This is a test. It is only a test. Had it been an actual job, you would have received raises, promotions, and other signs of appreciation. — Robert Benchley

Opera is where a guy gets stabbed in the back, and instead of dying, he sings. — Robert Benchley

Anything can happen, but it usually doesn't. — Robert Benchley

Ellen Brody:
Wanna get drunk and fool around?

Brody:
Oh Yeah. — Peter Benchley

To fantasies', he said. 'Tell me about yours.' His eyes were a bright, liquid blue, and his lips were parted in a half smile. — Peter Benchley

There seems to be no lengths to which humorless people will not go to analyze humor. It seems to worry them. — Robert Benchley

We should be afraid of sharks half as much as sharks should be afraid of us. — Peter Benchley

This is a work of fiction, and the people in it are fictitious. The ghosts are real. — Nathaniel Benchley

I know I'm drinking myself to a slow death, but then I'm in no hurry. — Robert Benchley

I hope that 'Jaws' will have brought sharks into the public interest at a time when we desperately need to reevaluate our care for the environment. — Peter Benchley

We are constantly being surprised that people did things well before we were born. — Robert Benchley

There are two kinds of travel: first class and with children. — Robert Benchley

Fascinations breeds preparedness, and preparedness, survival. — Peter Benchley

Streets flooded. Please advise. — Robert Benchley

Everything I've written is based on something that has happened to me or something that I know a great deal about. — Peter Benchley

Come up fish. Come to Quint. — Peter Benchley

I dive as much as I can. — Peter Benchley

I have tried to know absolutely nothing about a great many things, and I have succeeded fairly well. — Robert Benchley

Drawing on my fine command of the English language, I said nothing. — Robert Benchley

I have been told by hospital authorities that more copies of my works are left behind by departing patients than those of any other author. — Robert Benchley

If you think that you have caught a cold, call in a good doctor. Call in three good doctors and play bridge. — Robert Benchley

After an author has been dead for some time, it becomes increasingly difficult for his publishers to get a new book out of him each year. — Robert Benchley

It was one of those plays in which all of the actors unfortunately enunciated very clearly. — Robert Benchley

I don't believe in blaming inanimate objects for anything. — Peter Benchley

Without the oceans there would be no life on Earth. — Peter Benchley

A freelance is one who gets paid by the word
per piece or perhaps. — Robert Benchley

The wise man thinks once before he speaks twice. — Robert Benchley

Breaking the ice in the pitcher seems to be a feature of the early lives of all great men. — Robert Benchley

Charlemagne either died or was born or did something with the Holy Roman Empire in 800. — Robert Benchley

I can't bring myself to say, 'Well, I guess I'll be toddling along.' It isn't that I can't toddle. It's just that I can't guess I'll toddle. — Robert Benchley

England and America should scrap cricket and baseball and come up with a new game that they both can play. Like baseball, for example. — Robert Benchley

Sharks are like ax-murderers, Martin. People react to them with their guts. There's something crazy and evil and uncontrollable about them. — Peter Benchley

I'm a babe in the woods when it comes to the Internet. — Peter Benchley

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. — Peter Benchley

be possible that — Victoria Benchley

An ardent supporter of the hometown team should go to a game prepared to take offense, no matter what happens. — Robert Benchley

There is no such place as Budapest. Perhaps you are thinking of Bucharest, and there is no such place as Bucharest, either. — Robert Benchley

The only cure for a real hangover is death. — Robert Benchley

There are several ways to apportion the family income, all of them unsatisfactory. — Robert Benchley

Hooper ladled chum, which sounded to Brody, every time it hit the water, like diarrhea. — Peter Benchley

Tell us your phobias and we will tell you what you are afraid of. — Robert Benchley

The pencil sharpener is about as far as I have ever got in operating a complicated piece of machinery with any success. — Robert Benchley

What was it? What could it
His last thought was surprise. — Peter Benchley

Twenty-five years ago nobody knew much about white sharks. — Peter Benchley

We're going to need a bigger boat. — Peter Benchley

If there is a streak of ham anywhere in an actor, Shakespeare will bring it out. — Robert Benchley

You want to go easy on the suicide stuff - first thing you know, you'll ruin your health. — Robert Benchley

The Great Arizona Desert is full of the bleaching bones of people who waited for me to start something. — Robert Benchley

Don't go into the water if you're bleeding - at all, from anything, anywhere on your body. — Peter Benchley

What had once seemed shallow and tedious now loomed in memory like paradise. — Peter Benchley

I haven't been abroad in so long that I almost speak English without an accent now. — Robert Benchley

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

If only those old walls could talk ... how boring they would be. — Robert Benchley

I believe implicitly that every young man in the world is fascinated with either sharks or dinosaurs. — Peter Benchley