“It was an hour before the first shark hit him.”

“Then there is the other secret. There isn't any symbolysm [sic]. The sea is the sea. The old man is an old man. The boy is a boy and the fish is a fish. The shark are all sharks no better and no worse. All the symbolism that people say is shit. What goes beyond is what you see beyond when you know.”

“I have a Thompson SubMachine gun and we shoot sharks with it. As soon as they put their heads out we give them a burst.”

“They would hit a man in the water, if they were hungry, even if the man had no smell of fish blood nor of fish slime on him.“Ay,” the old man said. “Galanos. Come on galanos.”

“He thought of the Riviera, as it was then before it had all been built up, with the lovely stretches of blue sea and the sand beaches and the stretches of pine woods and the mountains of the Esterel going out into the sea. He remembered it as it was when he and Zelda had first found it before people went there for the summer.”

“The old man's head was clear and good now and he was full of resolution but he had little hope. It was too good to last, he thought. He took one look at the great fish as he watched the shark close in.”

“He saw the girl watching him and he smiled at her. It was an old smile that he had been using for fifty years, ever since he first smiled...”