Quotes About Silence

So tell me what brings you here," Laney says. Adam and I look at each other. He says nothing. Ass-hat. That's one of Jenny's favorite words, and it's becoming one of mine, too. I wait him out, staring steadily, wondering if he can feel the poison seeping out of my heart.

Karigan," Alton said. "I would . . . I . . . well, it would please me . . . What I want to say . . ." One moment he was speaking as a polished aristocrat should, the next he couldn't speak at all.

That was how change came she supposed, in the quiet of things unspoken and truths unacknowledged. (The Great Alone)

How was it that her whole life could be distilled down to that simple truth? Words mattered. Her life had been defined by things said and unsaid, and now her marriage was being undermined by silence.

Too many things to say. Too many things unsaid.

In the silence, Leni wondered if one person could ever really save another, or if it was the kind of thing you had to do for yourself.

Then he left her there, standing alone, surrounded by word ghosts; things she could have said.

Leni felt distance spreading between them. That was how change came, she supposed: in the quiet of things unspoken and truths unacknowledged.

Then he left her there, standing along, surrounded by word ghosts; things she could have said.

The falling apart of a man's life should make more noise. It should startle passesrby with its Sturm and Drang. It ought to sound like the Parthenon crashing down. Not this ordinary, everyday kind of quiet...He closed his eyes...And still it was quiet, this falling apart of his life, as silent as the last beat of an old man's heart. A quiet, echoing thud, and then...nothing.

Sometimes love means trusting people to make their own decisions. In other words, shutting up.

As if sometimes the world really did amount to a quiet arrangement.

And there's nobody there. But

With your work finished and the caravan halted, you stretch out on the sand with a blanket under your head and breathe in the gentle breeze which has replaced the dry, fiery daytime wind. Then you leave the camp and go down to the dunes for prayer. Time passes undisturbed. No obligations harass you, no noise disturbs you, no worry awaits you: time is all yours. So you satiate yourself with prayer and silence, while the stars light up in the sky.

I said earlier that prayer is like love. Words pour at first. Then we are more silent and can communicate in monosyllables. In difficulties a gesture is enough, a word, or nothing at all—love is enough.

Men who had poetry in their soul come silently into the world and live quietly down the years, and yet when they are gone no moon in the sky is lucid enough to compare with the light they shed when they are among the living.

Writing is a struggle against silence.

The books are advancing silently, innocently through my house. There is no way I can stop them.

People talk too much. Humans aren't descended from monkeys. They come from parrots.

Fools talk, cowards are silent, wise men listen.

He squeezed his eyes shut and sent up a silent prayer.

When no one is left to tell what happened, family histories keep their secrets.

do, she knew that. She should have attempted to explain herself, explain the unexplainable. But

Even for Detroit's liberal mayor, peace was based on black people quietly and gracefully accepting the fact that they had no right to their rights.