34 Quotes by Ali Benjamin

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.