Quotes About Stillness

I stand on the corner, pretending I am a tree.

This is the solstice, the still point of the sun, its cusp and midnight, the year's threshold and unlocking, where the past lets go of and becomes the future; the place of caught breath, the door of a vanished house left ajar...

This afternoon held that special quality of mournful emptiness I've connected with late Sunday afternoons ever since childhood: the feeling of having nothing to do.

Is anything wrong, dear? the old joke went. No, why? You moved. Just don't move.

I am like a room where things once happened and now nothing does, except the pollen of the weeds that grow up outside the window, blowing in as dust across the floor.

There's time to spare. This is one of the things I wasn't prepared for - the amount of unfilled time, the long parentheses of nothing. Time as white sound.

I am like a room where things once happened and now nothing does, except the pollen of the weeds that grow up inside the window, blowing in as dust across the floor.

I can listen to my own heartbeat against the bedsprings, I can stroke myself, under the dry white sheets, in the dark, but I too am dry and white, hard, granular; it's like running my hand over a plateful of dried rice; it's like snow. There's something dead about it, something deserted. I am like a room where things once happened and now nothing does, except the pollen of the weeds that grow up outside the window, blowing in as dust across the floor.   Here

I am like a room where things once happened and now nothing does, except

But they only run away. Run isn't quite accurate. Their legs don't move. Their still-twitching feet don't touch the ground.

When I start feeling shaky I lie down, expecting nothing, and it arrives, washing over me in a wave of black vacancy

This is one of the things I wasn't prepared for—the amount of unfilled time, the long parentheses of nothing.

Nothing safer than dead

but as I am a scholar I feel obliged to document what it is like here, most of the time, between the dramatic climaxes. In truth it is like this: You cannot imagine how time can be so still. It hangs. It weighs, and yet there is so little of it. It goes so slowly and it is so scarce. If I was writing this scene it would last a full 15 minutes. I would lie here and you would sit there.

You cannot imagine how time Ã¢â'¬Â¦ can be Ã¢â'¬Â¦ so still.             It hangs. It weighs. And yet there is so little of it.             It goes so slowly, and yet it is so scarce.

You cannot imagine how time … can be … so still. It hangs. It weighs. And yet there is so little of it. It goes so slowly, and yet it is so scarce. — Margaret Edson (Wit: A Play)

You cannot imagine how time … can be … so still. It hangs. It weighs. And yet there is so little of it. It goes so slowly, and yet it is so scarce." ? Margaret Edson, Wit: A Play

Silence is the language of inertia.

being stopped and

It was as if the whole world were enveloped in an unmoving blanket of grey smoke. And the whole world was still.

Paintings! They're like TV, but they don't move.

Best of all is it to preserve everything in a pure, still heart, and let there be for every pulse a thanksgiving, and for every breath a song.

Within you there is a stillness and sanctuary to which you can retreat at any time and be yourself

It is indeed a radical act of love just to sit down and be quiet for a time by yourself.