Quotes About Silence

We fall back into silence. I look around XO Cafe and notice that chatter happens mostly at tables where the diners are young and hip. The older couples, the ones sporting wedding bands that wink with their silverware, eat without the pepper of conversation. Is it because they are so comfortable, they already know what the other is thinking? Or is it because after a certain point, there is simply nothing left to say?

I understood why you didn't cry, even though it hurt: there are kinds of pain you couldn't speak out loud. •

You must be exhausted from singing & need to rest your throat. - Trey Nice Way to tell her to shut up - Anna

tape showing the "eight silent ways." Some of the actors must have been brain-wipes, since they were actually killed.

No one looks too closely at a librarian. People are afraid of going blind from the glare of ssss -ssso much compressed wisdom.

I was just going to stand here and watch it happen. I wasn't going to say a fucking thing. Why? Because what did it matter? What did any of it matter?

You never have to explain what you don't say.

Nec si quot placidis ignea noctibus Scintillant tacito sydera culmine, Nec si quot tepidum flante Favonio Ver suffundit humo rosas, Tot sint ora mihi...

Touch not the flute when drums are sounding around; when fools have the word, the wise will be silent.

No one knows what it is to lie here alone day after day, in silence and darkness, without hearing a voice or seeing a ray of light. Sad thoughts come over me, and I do not feel sometimes as if I could bear it any longer or as if it could ever be light again.

No one knows what it is to lie here alone day after day, in silence and darkness, without hearing a voice or seeing a ray of light. Sad thoughts come over me, and I do not feel sometimes as if I could bear it any longer or as if it could ever be light again. But when you come and read those words to me, then I am comforted and my heart rejoices once more.

A writer had to stand the silences that came with being alone[…]. You could think when you were alone, and writers needed to think.

her mouth working mutely like the valve of an undersea creature

Sleep is uncanny, I have always found it so, a nightly dress-rehearsal for being dead.

What a little vessel of sadness we are, sailing in this muffled silence through the autumn dark.

There was a beat of silence and the atmosphere thickened briefly. I glanced from one of them to the other, seeming to detect an invisible something passing between them, not so much a signal as a sort of silent token, like one of those almost impalpable acknowledgements that adulterers exchange when they are in company. The phenomenon was strange to me still but would become increasingly familiar the deep I penetrated into the secret world.

So, reader, should you ever find yourself writing about the world, take care not to nibble at the many tempting symbols she sets squarely in your path, or you'll be baited into saying things you don't really mean, and offending the people you want most to entertain. Develop, if you can, the technique of the pall bearers and myself: smile, to be sure -- for fucking dogs are truly funny -- but walk on and say nothing, as though you hadn't noticed.

I am so wise I had my mouth sewn shut.

When it comes to leadership, silence is nonverbal communication. It communicates agreement and grants permission by saying, "What you're doing is fine.

Silence Gives Consent

She still said nothing and I purposely did not look at her because I did not wish either to press her or to embarrass her. I was in love with her, and my heart went out to her as she tried to fathom her own feelings. I felt like saying: Don't bother to explain, darling. I know it all. Instead, the calculating side of my mind was at work: the side that plotted carefully, planned to get what it wanted and nearly always succeeded.

Both boys stayed very quiet for a few minutes, neither one wanting to say anything he might regret.

He knew that sometimes people who were sad didn't want to be asked about it; sometimes they'd offer the information themselves and sometimes they wouldn't stop talking about it for months on end, but on this occasion Bruno thought that he should wait before saying anything.

The first thing he noticed was how quiet it was. This was nothing like the kind of quiet he heard when he woke up in the middle of the night after a bad dream. When that happened, there were always strange, unidentifiable sounds seeping into his room from the tiny gaps where the windowpanes weren't sealed together correctly. At those moments he could always tell there was life outside, even if all that life was fast asleep. It was a silence that wasn't silence at all.