Quotes About Silence

Silence is one of the deepest Disciplines of the Spirit simply because it puts the stopper on all self-justification.

Some days you exist like the last speaker of an extinct language. These are the silences that litter the heart.

Can you imagine a silence so desperate to be heard?

Sometimes it seems that all our words, even those for love, are written in another language. And yet they still arrive, distant, full of their own silences which may be what allows us to invent another story, what saves us. What is the word for the kind of love the woman shows now? A word that contains the whole story the way her lamp contains her room, — Richard Jackson, from "The Whole Story," Resonance: Poems (The Ashland Poetry Press, 2010)

How seldom we can see our way to say what we love. — Richard Jackson, from "Elegy Along a Line of Sight," The Heart as Framed: New and Select Poems (Press 53, 2022)

I have only these words that seem as if they climbed up from the bottom of a dry well.

Don't talk. Kill it." That might be the sweetest thing a woman's ever said to me on a first date.

The thing you have to understand about Lucifer is that he hardly ever talks, and when he does, it's never much more than a whisper. When half the universe is hanging on to your every word, you don't have to shout.

Maybe that's why Heaven is silent and God doesn't speak to man anymore. Heavenly intervention would blow the point spread.

He pulls the tape off Allegra's mouth. Grabs her BY THE HAIR and gives her a peck on the lips.

It's not necessary to fill every moment with your own voice. Silence terrifies you. You see your own existence as so tenuous that you're afraid you'll pop like a bubble if, at every opportunity, you don't remind the world that you're alive. But wisdom begins in silence. In learning to listen. To words and to the world. Trust me. You won't disappear. And, in time, you might find that you've grown into something unexpected." "What?

Stop talking. It makes the bleeding worse. Also, I don't want to hear your perverted farm animal fantasies." "It wasn't a fantasy, baby. The pig and me, we danced." She puts a finger to my lips. "Hush. The doctors will be here soon with a straitjacket and, if you're good, ice cream." When I open my mouth to say "pistachio," she clamps her hand over my mouth and yells, "How's it coming, Kas?

There's a moment of silence, then the gates swing open. The last fifty yards up to the circular drive are dicey. The car finally commits seppuku halfway around the circle. Steam geysers from the radiator. Darker things leak from below.

The Magistrate hasn't said a word this whole time. He just stands there like a mantis, all insect patience and killer instincts.

I don't seem to be alone anymore." "Very well," says Vehuel. "We'd like—" "Shh," he says, holding up a hand. "I'm trying to count." "Of course," Vehuel says in a tone that makes it pretty obvious she's not used to getting shushed.

It doesn't matter if you and everyone else in the room are thinking it. You don't say the words. Words are weapons. They blast big bloody holes in the world. And words are bricks. Say something out loud and it starts turning solid. Say it loud enough and it becomes a wall you can't get through.

The beauty we love is very silent. It smiles softly to itself, but never speaks.

He stood there for a moment looking around the silent room, shaking his head slowly. All these books, he thought, the residue of a planet's intellect, the scrapings of futile minds, the leftovers, the potpourri of artifacts that had no power to save men from perishing.

Tonight-to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans-I ask for your support. (On his Vietnam War policy)

child, he had learned the gift of watchful silence.

I love to sleep. It's like being dead without the commitment.

In most cases, true greatness is a silent and lonely affair, unaccompanied by the trumpeted fanfare of acclaim.

but a good writer knows when to shut up and listen.

The big problem was subvocalization, or the sounding out of words in his mind as he read them. He couldn't seem to squelch the need to hear the words as he read.