Ali Benjamin Quotes & Sayings

There are worse misdeeds than those that are done for a higher purpose. — Ali Benjamin

It's peculiar how no-words can be better than words. Silence can say more than noise, in the same way that a person's absence can occupy even more space than their presence did. — Ali Benjamin

What is it about you that makes you able to love creatures that no one else can? — Ali Benjamin

There's no single right way to say goodbye to someone you love. But the most important thing is that you keep some part of them inside you. — Ali Benjamin

And that made me realize this: Everyone's story is different, all the time. No one is ever really together, even if it looks for a while like they — Ali Benjamin

Being seen is more about the ears than the eyes — Ali Benjamin

The more fragile the animal, the more it needs to protect itself. So the more venom a creature has, the more we should be able to forgive that animal. They're the ones that need it most. And, really, what is more fragile than a jellyfish, which doesn't even have any bones? — Ali Benjamin

Mrs. Turton says when something happens that no one can explain, it means you have bumped up against the edge of human knowledge. And that is when you need science. Science is the process for finding the explanations that no one else can give you. — Ali Benjamin

I'd always thought that being seen was about what people perceived with their eyes. But by the time the Eugene Field Memorial Middle School made the fall trip to the aquarium, I, Suzy Swanson, had disappeared entirely. Being seen is more about the ears than the eyes, it turns out. — Ali Benjamin

That's what science is," she explained. "It's learning what others have discovered about the world, and then - when you bump up against a question that no one has ever answered before - figuring out how to get the answer you need. — Ali Benjamin

Sometimes you want things to change so badly, you can't even stand to be in the same room with the way things actually are. — Ali Benjamin

Here's a calculation: If all the time that's passed since jellyfish showed up were compressed into a single eighty-year life-span, three billion heartbeats, human would appear on the scrne only during the person's final ten days on Earth - the last million heartbeats or so. Jellyfish would have been around for everything else - birth, infancy, toddlerhood, childhood. We humans would appear only to witness those final, gasping breaths. Jellyfish are survivors. They are survivors of everything that ever happened to everyone else. — Ali Benjamin

In the end Suzanne, it's a gift to spend time with people we care about. Even if it's imperfect. Even if that time doesn't end when, or how, we expected. Even when that person leaves us. — Ali Benjamin

THE TRICK TO ANYTHING IS JUST BELIEVING you can do it. When you believe in your own ability to do something, even something scary, it gives you an almost magic power. Confidence is magic. It can carry you through everything. — Ali Benjamin

A person can become invisible simply by staying quiet. — Ali Benjamin

It was exactly one month since the Worst Thing had happened, and almost as long since I'd started not-talking. Which isn't refusing to talk, like everyone thinks it is. It's just deciding not to fill the world with words if you don't have to. It is the opposite of constant-talking, which is what I used to do, and it's better than small talk, which is what people wished I did. — Ali Benjamin

I like your freckles, the way they look like constellations against your skin. When — Ali Benjamin

Somehow, that fact - that sometimes things do just happen - seemed like it might be the scariest and saddest truth of all. — Ali Benjamin

I lay down with my head on my mom's lap, which was warmer and softer than I remembered. It reminded me of a fact from Jenna's presentation--that a mother dolphin does not stop swimming for the first several weeks of her newborn's life. The newborn calf doesn't have enough blubber to float, so it needs to be carried along in its mother's slipstream. If the mother stops swimming, even for a short time, the calf will sink.

It must be tiring, being a mom. — Ali Benjamin

The staying and not-knowing and being afraid: That was worse than anything else that might have happened. — Ali Benjamin

MAYBE EVERYBODY'S END isn't the day they actually die, but the last time anyone speaks of them. — Ali Benjamin

There are so many things to be scared of in this world: blooms of jellies. A sixth extinction. A middle school dance. But maybe we can stop feeling so afraid. Maybe instead of feeling like a mote of dust, we can remember that all the creatures on this Earth are made from stardust.
And we are the only ones who get to know it.
That's the thing about jellyfish: They'll never understand that. All they can do is drift along, unaware.
Humans may be newcomers to this planet. We may be plenty fragile. But we're also the only ones who can decide to change. — Ali Benjamin

If people were silent, they could hear the noise of their own lives better. If people were silent, it would make what they did say, whenever they chose to say it, more important. If people were silent, they could read one another's signals, the way underwater creatures flash lights at one another, or turn their skin different colors. — Ali Benjamin

The staying still was the worst part. The waiting and not-knowing and being afraid: That was worse than anything else that might happen. — Ali Benjamin

We walked the rest of the way to math class in silence, but it was the best kind of silence. It was the not-talking kind of silence, the kind that so few people seemed to understand." -Suzy — Ali Benjamin

But a person doesn't always know the difference between a new beginning and a forever sort of ending. — Ali Benjamin

I'm sorry I made your time on this rock, this stupid little mote of dust, harder and not easier. — Ali Benjamin

Maybe this is what happens when a person grows up. Maybe the space between you and the other people in your life grows so big you can stuff it full of all kinds of lies. — Ali Benjamin

A jellyfish, if you watch it long enough, begins to look like a heart beating. It doesn't matter what kind: the blooded Atolla with its flashing siren lights, the frilly flower hat variety, or the near-transparent moon jelly, Aurelia aurita. It's their pulse, the way they contract swiftly, than release. Like a ghost heart-- a heart you can see right through, right into some other world where everything you ever lost as gone to hide.
Jellyfish don't even have hearts, of course-- no heart, no brain, no bone, no blood. But watch them for a while. You will see them beating. — Ali Benjamin

These things made me feel like I could stand in one place my whole life and never run out of new things to discover. I liked that so many things were out there, waiting to be known. — Ali Benjamin

Did you know that the light from our nearest star takes four years to reach us? Which means when we see it- when we see any star- we are really seeing what it looks like in the past. All those twinkling lights, every star in the sky, could have burned out years ago- the entire sky could be empty this very minute, and we wouldn't even know it. — Ali Benjamin

Saying goodbye is important. It's what allows us to begin to live again. — Ali Benjamin

this is real, and it is happening now, just as it happened before: We are under the big tree in my backyard, on that patch of dirt where we used to build fairy houses from moss and sticks and scraps of birch. It is late afternoon. All around us is golden light. We have been together all day, in our cutoff shorts and bare feet. It is the start of fifth grade, the start of being the oldest in the school. Next year, we will be the youngest all over again. But not yet. We are playing that hand-slapping game, the one we like to play at recess. You hold your hands out, palms up, and I place mine lightly on top. You pull yours out and try to slap mine. You hit air three times. On the fourth try, your — Ali Benjamin