Top 60 Shelby Van Pelt Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Humans. For the most part, you are dull and blundering. But occasionally, you can be remarkably bright creatures.”

— Shelby Van Pelt

2. “My neurons number half a billion, and they are distributed among my eight arms. On occasion, I have wondered whether I might have more intelligence in a single tentacle than a human does in its entire skull.”

— Shelby Van Pelt

3. “She understands what it means to never be able to stop moving, lest you find yourself unable to breathe.”

— Shelby Van Pelt

4. “Tell me again about the intelligence of humans. They cannot even manage to comprehend predictable meteorological events.”

— Shelby Van Pelt

5. “When I choose to hear, I hear everything.”

— Shelby Van Pelt

6. “All of these things had been stored away for her to pass along someday, relics to be carried up the branches of the family tree. But the family tree stopped growing long ago, its canopy thinned and frayed, not a single sap springing from the old rotting trunk. Some trees aren’t meant to sprout tender new branches, but to stand stoically on the forest floor, silently decaying.”

— Shelby Van Pelt

7. “My death is imminent. But I am not dead yet.”

— Shelby Van Pelt

8. “Marcellus was, in fact, an exceptional octopus.”

— Shelby Van Pelt

9. “How delicate those wounds were back then, how little it took to nudge the scabs out of place and start the bleeding anew.”

— Shelby Van Pelt

10. “It seems to be a hallmark of the human species: abysmal communication skills. Not that any other species are much better, mind you, but even a herring can tell which way the school it belongs to is turning and follow accordingly. Why can humans not use their millions of words to simply tell one another what they desire?”

— Shelby Van Pelt

11. “You can’t fix someone who is determined to stay broken.”

— Shelby Van Pelt

12. “Some trees aren’t meant to sprout tender new branches, but to stand stoically on the forest floor, silently decaying.”

— Shelby Van Pelt

13. “Tova has always felt more than a bit of empathy for the sharks, with their never-ending laps around the tank. She understands what it means to never be able to stop moving, lest you find yourself unable to breathe.”

— Shelby Van Pelt

14. “Ah, to be a human, for whom bliss can be achieved by mere ignorance! Here, in the kingdom of animals, ignorance is dangerous. The poor herring dropped into the tank lacks any awareness of the shark lurking below. Ask the herring whether what he doesn’t know can hurt him.”

— Shelby Van Pelt

15. “We must say goodbye, friend. But I’m glad Terry saved you, because you saved me.”

— Shelby Van Pelt

16. “Secrets are everywhere. Some humans are crammed full of them. How do they not explode? It seems to be a hallmark of the human species: abysmal communication skills.”

— Shelby Van Pelt

17. “Why can humans not use their millions of words to simply tell one another what they desire?”

— Shelby Van Pelt

18. “But keeping busy is good. Cleaning is always good. It’s something to do.”

— Shelby Van Pelt

19. “As a general rule, I like holes. A hole at the top of my tank gives me freedom. But I do not like the hole in her heart. She only has one, not three, like me. Tova’s heart. I will do everything I can to help her fill it.”

— Shelby Van Pelt

20. “These women have always worn motherhood big and loud on their chests, but Tova keeps hers inside, sunk deep in her guts like an old bullet. Private.”

— Shelby Van Pelt

21. “How did you, like, go on?” He looks down at her and swallows hard. “I mean, he was here one day and gone the next. How do you recover from something like that?” Tova hesitates. “You don’t recover. Not all the way. But you do move on. You have to.”

— Shelby Van Pelt

22. “The Knit-Wits have been her friends for years, and sometimes she still feels as if she’s a mistaken jigsaw piece who found her way into the wrong puzzle.”

— Shelby Van Pelt

23. “But I do not like the hole in her heart. She only has one, not three, like me. Tova’s heart. I will do everything I can to help her fill it.”

— Shelby Van Pelt

24. “The parents will grow old atop this mountain of a family they’ve built, and even if parts of it crumble, from time to time, there will be enough left to support them.”

— Shelby Van Pelt

25. “Smart cookie. I am smart, but I am not a snack object dispensed from a packaged food machine. What a preposterous thing to say.”

— Shelby Van Pelt

26. “Humans are the only species who subvert truth for their own entertainment. They call them jokes. Sometimes puns.”

— Shelby Van Pelt

27. “When I choose to hear, I hear everything. I can tell when the tide is turning to ebb, outside the prison walls, based on the tone of the water crashing against the rocks. When I choose to see, my vision is precise. I can tell which particular human has touched the glass of my tank by the fingerprints left behind.”

— Shelby Van Pelt

28. “But I do not like the hole in her heart. She only has one, not three, like me.”

— Shelby Van Pelt

29. “Tova knew there was a bottom to those depths of despair. Once your soul was soaked through with grief, any more simply ran off, overflowed, the way maple syrup on Saturday morning pancakes always cascaded onto the table whenever Erik was allowed to pour it on himself.”

— Shelby Van Pelt

30. “No, the deal is never anyone’s fault. But you control the way you play.”

— Shelby Van Pelt

31. “What would a captive cephalopod know of joy?”

— Shelby Van Pelt

32. “But I have grown to enjoy the bucket. With the bucket comes a sensation of total nothingness, which, in most ways, is more pleasant than the everything-ness.”

— Shelby Van Pelt

33. “But young women don’t want bone china anymore. They’ve no use for old Swedish things. They have their own dinnerware, probably from Ikea. New Swedish things.”

— Shelby Van Pelt

34. “By forty, her corn-silk hair was gray. By fifty, the lines on her face seemed etched in clay. Now she sometimes catches a glimpse of her profile reflected in a shop window, the way her shoulders have begun to stoop. She wonders how this body can possibly be hers.”

— Shelby Van Pelt

35. “Barbara has always been efficient about slicing away other people’s nonsense, a quality Tova can’t help but admire.”

— Shelby Van Pelt

36. “Now, Tova comes here to be alone with her thoughts, when she needs a break from being alone in her house. When even the television can’t punch through the unbearable quiet.”

— Shelby Van Pelt

37. “How does it feel, you ask? It is comfortable. It is home. I am lucky. I am grateful.”

— Shelby Van Pelt

38. “The sea, too, is very good at keeping secrets.”

— Shelby Van Pelt

39. “It may not be bliss, if such a thing even exists, but with this knowledge, I have achieved something akin to contentment. Or, perhaps more accurately, a temporary abatement of misery. Ah, to be a human, for whom bliss can be achieved by mere ignorance!”

— Shelby Van Pelt

40. “My neurons number half a billion, and they are distributed among my eight arms. On occasion, I have wondered whether I might have more intelligence in a single tentacle than a human does in its entire skull. Smart cookie. I am smart, but I am not a snack object dispensed from a packaged food machine. What a preposterous thing to say.”

— Shelby Van Pelt

41. “But young women don’t want bone china anymore. They’ve no use for old Swedish things. They.”

— Shelby Van Pelt

42. “Conscience does make cowards of us all.”

— Shelby Van Pelt

43. “But then, so much about her life never turned out how she intended.”

— Shelby Van Pelt

44. “This confused me at first because my organ heart skips beats, many of them, every time I swim. But when the cleaning woman fell from the stool, I was not swimming. And yet it stuttered.”

— Shelby Van Pelt

45. “Her void held no sweetness, only bitterness; at the time, Erik had been gone five years. How delicate those wounds were back then, how little it took to nudge the scabs out of place and start the bleeding anew.”

— Shelby Van Pelt

46. “For a moment, I considered this option. Nothing was something. What might lie on the other side of life?”

— Shelby Van Pelt

47. “I’m sorry,” Tova says. She places a hand on his shoulder. Doesn’t rub or squeeze, just places it there, as if the contact might siphon off some of his pain.”

— Shelby Van Pelt

48. “Kids need a little direction now and then,” Ethan says. “Then again, I suppose we all do.”

— Shelby Van Pelt

49. “AS ONE WOULD gather from the name, the Knit-Wits began as a knitting club. Twenty-five years ago, a handful of Sowell Bay women met to swap yarn. Eventually, it became a refuge for them to escape empty homes, bittersweet voids left by children grown and moved on.”

— Shelby Van Pelt

50. “Young humans would fail abysmally in the sea.”

— Shelby Van Pelt