Quotes About Silence

At meals Mama and Papa would observe each other from opposite ends of the long table, and Mama's grey eyes would fly angry silences at Papa, who would catch them in his enormous mustache. Their marriage was a tall column of pain, like a fluted vase. Balanced precariously on the fricative point at which Mama's personality met Papa's chin, it was always about to fall over and smash.

These woods are where silence has come to lick its wounds.

We watched the water between us rushing back out to sea and I swear I saw the ocean fill up with words, like Jude was bleeding all the things he couldn't tell anyone because it might kill him.

The more alone I get, the louder the world becomes.

When she met my father she was still really good at being quiet. When she met him she realized how she had been collecting silence in a slender, delicate glass jar behind her ribcage. The bottle was not corked and so she always had to be very careful not to spill it.

Her voice is an empty bucket kicked down a stone cellar staircase.

What makes a home? Take your hands in his. This plus this. What makes the unsaid audible? The distance between us.

How does she know herself without a mother? How does she know herself without sound? I guess she knows the shape of things that aren't there instead.

I shall state silences more competently than ever a better man spangled the butterflies of vertigo.

Perhaps it's done already, perhaps they have said me already, perhaps they have carried me to the threshold of my story, before the door that opens on my story, that would surprise me, if it opens, it will be I, it will be the silence, where I am, I don't know, I'll never know, in the silence you don't know, you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on.

Yes, in my life, since we must call it so, there were three things, the inability to speak, the inability to be silent, and solitude, thats what Ive had to make the best of.

Not to want to say, not to know what you want to say, not to be able to say what you think you want to say, and never to stop saying, or hardly ever, that is the thing to keep in mind, even in the heat of composition.

To restore silence is the role of objects.

Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.

Where I am, I don't know, I'll never know, in the silence you don't know, you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on.

Words are like money; there is nothing so useless, unless when in actual use.

It is tact that is golden, not silence.

Each moment I felt increasing upon me that dreadful doubt as to my own identity—as to the continuity of my past and present existence—which is the first sign of that distraction which comes on those who have lost themselves in the bush. I had fought against this feeling hitherto, and had conquered it; but the intense silence and gloom of this rocky wilderness were too much for me, and I felt that my power of collecting myself was beginning to be impaired.

After the blaze burns out, keep watching and wait to hear what the ashes are saying.

Abuse is often of service. There is nothing so dangerous to an author as silence. His name, like a shuttlecock, must be beat backward and forward, or it falls to the ground.

Cold approbation gave the ling'ring bays,For those who durst not censure, scarce could praise.

You hesitate to stab me with a word, and know not - silence is the sharper sword.

To let friendship die away by negligence and silence, is certainly not wise. It is voluntarily to throw away one of the greatest comforts of this weary pilgrimage.

Declamation roar'd, while Passion slept.