Top 35 Ali Benjamin Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “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

2. “Saying goodbye is important. It’s what allows us to begin to live again.”

— Ali Benjamin

3. “A person can become invisible simply by staying quiet. Being seen is more about the ears than the eyes, it turns out.”

— Ali Benjamin

4. “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

5. “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

6. “All the creatures on Earth might be made from stardust. But 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. We 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

7. “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

8. “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

9. “But a person doesn’t always know the difference between a new beginning and a forever sort of ending.”

— Ali Benjamin

10. “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

11. “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.”

— Ali Benjamin

12. “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

13. “The thing is, a person gets so few chances to really fix something, to make it right. When one of those opportunities comes along, you can’t overthink it. You’ve got to grab hold of it and cling to it with all your might, no matter how cray cray it might seem.”

— Ali Benjamin

14. “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

15. “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

16. “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

17. “Suddenly I imagined the universe as a giant set of LEGOs, all those pieces constructing endless forms, then coming apart only to create new forms.”

— Ali Benjamin

18. “We may be plenty fragile. But we’re also the only ones who can decide to change.”

— Ali Benjamin

19. “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

20. “Who knows? Maybe everybody’s end isn’t the day they actually die, but the last time anyone speaks of them. Maybe when you die you don’t really disappear, but you fade into a shadow, dark and featureless, only your outlines visible. Over time, as people forget you, your silhouette gradually fades into darkness until the final time anyone says your name on this planet.”

— Ali Benjamin

21. “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

22. “A person can become invisible simply by staying quiet.”

— Ali Benjamin

23. “What is it about you that makes you able to love creatures that no one else can?”

— Ali Benjamin

24. “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

25. “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

26. “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

27. “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

28. “Who knows. Maybe everybody’s end isn’t the day they actually die, but the last time anyone speaks of them. Maybe when you die you don’t really disappear, but you fade into a shadow, dark and featureless, only your outlines visible.”

— Ali Benjamin

29. “The staying and not-knowing and being afraid: That was worse than anything else that might have happened.”

— Ali Benjamin

30. “Yes, the astronomer was saying. Yes, we are a part of this universe, we are in this universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts is that the universe is in us.”

— Ali Benjamin

31. “Somehow, that fact – that sometimes things do just happen – seemed like it might be the scariest and saddest truth of all.”

— Ali Benjamin

32. “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

33. “There are worse misdeeds than those that are done for a higher purpose.”

— Ali Benjamin

34. “I like your freckles, the way they look like constellations against your skin. When.”

— Ali Benjamin

35. “Because some hearts beat only about 412 million times. Which might sound like a lot. But the truth is, it barely even gets you twelve years.”

— Ali Benjamin

36. “Mrs. Turton says that if you lived to be eighty years old, your heart would beat three billion times. I was thinking about that, trying to imagine a number that large. Three billion. Count back three billion hours, and modern humans don’t exist – just wild-eyed cave people, all hairy and grunting. Three billion years, and life itself barely exists. And yet here’s your heart, doing its job all the time, one beat after the next, all the way up to three billion.”

— Ali Benjamin

37. “We were made of stardust.”

— Ali Benjamin

38. “You have to be crazy brave to live in Australia.”

— Ali Benjamin

39. “Finding the right words has never been a strength of mine.”

— Ali Benjamin