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| Jaws (novel) (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
I recently picked up my copy of “Jaws” and I have to admit
that the opening passage is very hard to beat. Consider these very famous
lines:
“The great fish moved
silently through the night water, propelled by short sweeps of its crescent
tail. The mouth was open just enough to permit a rush of water over the gills.
There was little other motion: an occasional correction of the apparently aimless
course by the slight raising or lowering of a pectoral fin -- as a bird changes
direction by dipping one wing and lifting the other. The eyes were sightless in
the black, and the other senses transmitted nothing extraordinary to the small,
primitive brain. The fish might have been asleep, save for the movement
dictated by countless millions of years of instinctive continuity: lacking the
flotation bladder common to other fish and the fluttering flaps to push
oxygen-bearing water through its gills, it survived only by moving.”
