Quotes About Silence

After midnight and no air-raid

If tears of grief flowed from the eyes and tears of anger from the ears, I could show my heart without saying a word. But my tears all pour in the same way from my eyes, and there's no difference in their color. It's not surprising that you can't tell what's in my heart.

Remember the movements that don't look like moving.

We could take his gag away , thought Isaac, and he wouldn't scream . . . but then he might speak . . . He left the gag in place.

There are no telepaths in this universe, I think, but there are empathics, with languages so silent that they may as well be sharing thoughts.

He is unable to think in words. The shells begin once again to pound the water around him, to make it into a bloody broth of metal and the dead.

What had touched me sent me not into mindless silence but into a dream arena, where I was quarry.

A vacant mind is open to all suggestions, as the hollow mountain returns all sounds.

The one who understands does not speak; the one who speaks does not understand

A bad word whispered will echo a hundred miles

Talk doesn't cook rice.

Married couples tell each other a thousand things without speech.

Words are tricky. Sometimes you need them to bring out the hurt festering inside. If you don't, it turns gangrenous and kills you. . . . But sometimes words can break a feeling into pieces.

Everyone breathes in air, but it's a wise person who knows when to use that air to speak and when to exhale in silence.

Some things can't be spoken. The body alone knows them. It holds them patiently, in its silent, intelligent cells, until you are ready to see.

In the temple, I sit on the cool floor next to Grandfather, beneath the stern benevolence of the goddess's glance. Grandfather is clad in only a traditional silk dhoti--no fancy modern clothes for him. That's one of the things I admire about him, how he is always unapologetically, uncompromisingly himself. His spine is erect and impatient; white hairs blaze across his chest.

blamed love, too, for my silence. How it makes us back down from protesting because we're afraid of displeasing the beloved, or because we're afraid that our disagreement is the symptom of a greater disease: incompatibility of values.

Talking further about it and realizing how deep my unhappiness went would only fill him with sorrow and guilt. That's how love stops us when it might be healthier to speak out, to not let frustration and rage build up until it explodes.

My fault my fault. A refrain so many women the world over have been taught to sing. 'Why do you say that, beti?

Later I would ask, "Why did you save me, why?" The serpents never answered. What answer is there for love.

Through their kisses and caresses they experienced a joy and wonder the equal of which has never been known or heard of. But I shall be silent...; for the rarest and most delectable pleasures are those which are hinted at, but never told.

A good silence never harmed anyone but speaking often causes harm.

But many have to look on in silence at what distresses them.

There are things you can only say with a canyon. Or smoke moving across a vally toward the mist.