Jaws - One of the greatest movie lines of all time?

There's a ton of quotable dialogue from Jaws. Quint's monologue is one of my all-time favorite scenes, and it's one of the few movies I consider to be absolutely perfect.

That is a great line, but not even the most celebrated from that movie:

"You're gonna need a bigger boat."

AFI's 100 Top Movie Quotes

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Quint's monologue

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Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into our side, Chief. We was comin' back from the island of Tinian to Leyte... just delivered the bomb. The Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in twelve minutes. Didn't see the first shark for about a half an hour. Tiger. Thirteen footer. You know, you know that when you're in the water, chief? You tell by lookin' from the dorsal to the tail. Well, we didn't know. 'Cause our bomb mission had been so secret, no distress signal had been sent, huh. They didn't even list us overdue for a week. Very first light, chief. The sharks come cruisin'. So we formed ourselves into tight groups. You know it's... kinda like 'ol squares in battle like uh, you see on a calendar, like the battle of Waterloo. And the idea was, the shark goes to the nearest man and then he'd start poundin' and hollerin' and screamin' and sometimes the shark would go away. Sometimes he wouldn't go away. Sometimes that shark, he looks right into you. Right into your eyes. You know the thing about a shark, he's got... lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll's eye. When he comes at ya, doesn't seem to be livin'. Until he bites ya and those black eyes roll over white. And then, ah then you hear that terrible high pitch screamin' and the ocean turns red and spite of all the poundin' and the hollerin' they all come in and rip you to pieces. Y'know by the end of that first dawn, lost a hundred men! I don't know how many sharks, maybe a thousand! I don't know how many men, they averaged six an hour. On Thursday mornin' chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player, Bosun's Mate. I thought he was asleep, reached over to wake him up. Bobbed up and down in the water, just like a kinda top. Up ended. Well... he'd been bitten in half below the waist. Noon the fifth day, Mr. Hooper, a Lockheed Ventura saw us, he swung in low and he saw us. He's a young pilot, a lot younger than Mr. Hooper, anyway he saw us and come in low. And three hours later a big fat PBY comes down and start to pick us up. You know that was the time I was most frightened? Waitin' for my turn. I'll never put on a lifejacket again. So, eleven hundred men went in the water, three hundred and sixteen men come out, the sharks took the rest, June the 29, 1945. Anyway, we delivered the bomb.

I read a book on the USS Indianapolis. It is insane the hell those men went through.

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it's one of the few movies I consider to be absolutely perfect.

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I would probably agree. The fact that it still hasn't lost its luster after 40 years is a pretty good sign of how great it is.

One of those rare instances where the movie is much better than the book.

Quint is one of my all time favorite characters. I was a little kid the first time I saw Jaws, for years I wanted to make a living by "sharking".

"Fare well and adieu to you fair Spanish ladies"

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and it's one of the few movies I consider to be absolutely perfect.

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Agree, and it's the surprising result how many problems they had in production.

During production, Spielberg worried everyday of being fired and 40 years later I think it remains his best film.

Almost every line in that movie is quoteable

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"You're gonna need a bigger boat."

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Bigger Boat