Quotes About Silence

When I finally retire, I just want to go away so no one has to listen to me.

Gods don't answer letters.

It's a good feeling to not tell people what's going on.

A good film script should be able to do completely without dialogue.

Nobody talked a lot in Japan, but I always had a good relationship with everyone. I always liked to talk with Anderson. He has always been very respectful because he's a student of the martial arts.

The long silences need to be loved, perhaps more than the words which arrive to describe them in time.

EPITAPH Now I'm not the brightest knife in the drawer, but I know a couple things about this life: poverty silence, impermanence discipline and mystery The world is not illusory, we are From crimson thread to toe tag If you are not disturbed there is something seriously wrong with you, I'm sorry And I know who I am I'll be a voice coming from nowhere, inside-- be glad for me.

The moon's a dead rock, but I still like the word, so black in its white space. […] what can we say to the moon except You again? You again.

Our thoughts were so awesome to us, that no one could speak a word, not even 'Goodbye.' We hugged and clasped and wept silently.

What had been quiet and restful was now silent and empty.

It's less the words they say than those they leave unsaid that split old friends apart.

Part of the inner world of everyone is this sense of emptiness, unease, incompleteness, and I believe that this in itself is a word from God, that this is the sound that God's voice makes in a world that has explained him away. In such a world, I suspect that maybe God speaks to us most clearly through his silence, his absence, so that we know him best through our missing him.

To sentimentalise something is to look only at the emotion in it and at the emotion it stirs in us rather than at the reality of it, which we are always tempted not to look at because reality, truth, silence are all what we are not much good at and avoid when we can. To sentimentalise something is to savour rather than to suffer the sadness of it, is to sigh over the prettiness of it rather than to tremble at the beauty of it, which may make fearsome demands of us or pose fearsome threats.

This is what I think, in essence, prayer is. It is the breaking of silence. It is the need to be known and the need to know. Prayer is the sound made by our deepest aloneness.

What deadens us most to God's presence within us, I think, is the inner dialogue that we are continuously engaged in with ourselves, the endless chatter of human thought. I suspect that there is nothing more crucial to true spiritual comfort . . . than being able from time to time to stop that chatter including the chatter of spoken prayer.

The author must keep his mouth shut when his work starts to speak.

That for which we find words is something already dead in our hearts

Of what is great one must either be silent or speak with greatness. With greatness--that means cynically and with innocence.

Thus I spoke, more and more softly; for I was afraid of my own thoughts and the thoughts behind my thoughts.

The greatest events- they are not noisiest but our stillest hours. The world revolves, not around the inventors of new noises, but around the inventors of new values; it revolves inaudibly.

A friend should be a master at guessing and keeping still: you must not want to see everything.

We like to be out in nature so much because it has no opinion about us.

My taste, which may be the opposite of a tolerant taste, is in this case very far from saying Yes indiscriminately: it does not like to say Yes; better to say No, but best of all to say nothing.

Every moment of life wants to tell us something, but we do not want to hear what it has to say: when we are alone and quiet we are afraid that something will be whispered into our ear and hence we despise quiet and drug ourselves with sociability.