The Thing About Jellyfish Quotes

“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, The Thing About Jellyfish

“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, The Thing About Jellyfish

“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 Thing About Jellyfish

“Somehow, that fact - that sometimes things do just happen - seemed like it might be the scariest and saddest truth of all.”
― Ali Benjamin, The Thing About Jellyfish

“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, The Thing About Jellyfish

“But a person doesn’t always know the difference between a new beginning and a forever sort of ending.”
― Ali Benjamin, The Thing About Jellyfish

“Saying goodbye is important. It's what allows us to begin to live again.”
― Ali Benjamin, The Thing About Jellyfish

“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, The Thing About Jellyfish

“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, The Thing About Jellyfish

“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, The Thing About Jellyfish

“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, The Thing About Jellyfish

“A person can become invisible simply by staying quiet.”
― Ali Benjamin, The Thing About Jellyfish

“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 Thing About Jellyfish

“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, The Thing About Jellyfish

“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" -Suzy”
― Ali Benjamin, The Thing About Jellyfish

“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, The Thing About Jellyfish

“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, The Thing About Jellyfish

“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, The Thing About Jellyfish

“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, The Thing About Jellyfish

“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, The Thing About Jellyfish

“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, The Thing About Jellyfish

“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, The Thing About Jellyfish

“There is at least one species of jellyfish that can grow younger, which is something that pretty much no creature on Earth can do. Don't believe me? Look it up. Turritopsis dohrinii. The immortal jellyfish.
When it's threatened, Turritopsis dohrinii can return from its adult medusa stage, the stage where a jellyfish looks like a jellyfish, all the way back into a younger stage, where it clings to the bottom of the ocean floor for safety. Theoretically, it can do this indefinitely: grow old, then young, old, then young, and never really die.
It would be as if, when everything started going wrong, when it started getting stressful, we could have just gone backward. Imagine that. Imagine if we could have said, "Oops, this is too hard," and shrunk in size, returned to a place of being just kids, the way we always had been.
And we could just stay there, tethered safely, forever.”
― Ali Benjamin, The Thing About Jellyfish

“A person can become invisible simply by staying quiet. Being seen is more about the ears than the eyes, it turns out.”
― Ali Benjamin, The Thing About Jellyfish

“We may be plenty fragile. But we’re also the only ones who can decide to change.”
― Ali Benjamin, The Thing About Jellyfish

“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, The Thing About Jellyfish

“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, The Thing About Jellyfish

“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, The Thing About Jellyfish

“Well, whatever you want to say, I recommend you come right out and say it. Just open your mouth and tell the world what's on your mind. Of course, with you generation, I always feel like I have to add this: Please don't do it through text or e-mail or anything like that. When you need to communicate something important, speak your truth face-to-face....
When you say what you have to say through a computer or phone, there are often miscommunications. But when it's just you and someone else, and you're right in front of them, speaking your truth, they are much more likely to understand.”
― Ali Benjamin, The Thing About Jellyfish

“that is my favorite thing about this book: the image of those dangling bottles, all those terrible memories that somehow make music when they knock against one another.”
― Ali Benjamin, The Thing About Jellyfish