Quotes About Silence

The unsaid is a powerful tool. It invites the reader into the narrative, filling in gaps, interpreting silences and half-finished sentences, and seeing the hidden fear in someone's eye.

Facts tend to take the punch out of a good hate rant and are therefore left best unsaid.

One of the most unsettling things about 'Monologue' is its long silences, in which the man sits alone, staring into the middle distance, without grip of his narrative, lost to the past.

I need to be free, to speak the unspeakable. You can't do that in office.

When threats become unspeakable, unshareable and even unreadable, their power over us only grows.

We all have thoughts and feelings that we believe are fundamental to our lives but that are better left unspoken.

The history of racial violence in our country is both omnipresent and unspoken. It is a smog that surrounds us that few will admit is there.

Saying it out loud as a child is scary, but saying I felt unstable out loud as an adult with children was really scary. The fear of losing your children stops you from saying anything. It's a never-ending battle.

You haven't partied until you've partied at dawn in complete silence with Buddhist monks.

At one time in my life, from the time I was seven until I was about 13, I didn't speak. I only spoke to my brother. The reason I didn't speak: I had been molested, and I told the name of the molester to my brother who told it to the family.

There is no greater agony than carrying the burden of an untold story.

Thank heaven, though, one of the few mistakes I haven't made is to talk about the unwritten book.

It's good to shut up sometimes.

My parents never referenced Ethiopia that much, largely because of the circumstances under which we left. We left during a time of political upheaval, and there was a lot of loss that came with that, so my parents were reluctant to talk about those things. So I had, by and large, an American childhood.

Personally, when things upset me, I get quiet and closed off. I have nothing to say, and a chill sets in while I think about what's going on.

You know, I had grown up standing on public sidewalks, saying things that people, you know, were very provoked by and were upset by. And - but standing outside that first soldier's funeral, it was eerily quiet.

When I started my career in television, there was a certain type of stories that were told. Who would have thought that one day I would get a chance to make a film on a story that is based on nothing, just a slap - a habit or practice that has been normalized for so long that if the woman gets upset over it, society says she is 'over-reacting.'

The effect of depleted uranium, used by America in the Gulf War, is never referred to.

They listened more than they talked, but that was the way of wise men and women.

She sat silent, looking straight ahead. What did he care about the hot sun on her head? What did she care? Nothing worse could possibly happen to her.

Work hard in silence, let your success be your noise.

If A is a success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut

Work hard in silence, let success be your noise.

In Mozambique, the story goes, monkeys do not talk, because they know if they utter even a single word some man will come and put them to work.