Quotes About Silence

Once you said a thing, it could never be taken back and would be taken up and repeated and altered and told again, no matter how misshapen and out of true. Better to say nothing.

I did not see the wolf when he came. I did not hear him. There was only this: A little before dawn I became aware of a hush, and I realized that the only breathing to be heard in the room was my own.

Progressivism simply cannot account for the easy traffic from socialism to fascism. Consequently, progressives typically maintain complete silence about this whole historical relationship which is deeply embarrassing to them.

The sea sounded like a thousand secrets, all whispered at the same time.

As long as I live I shall remember that silent minute.

But during the many happy hours that Cadpig was to sit watching it in the warm kitchen she never liked it quite so much as that other television, that still silent television she had seen on Christmas Eve when the puppies had rested so peacefully in that strange lofty building. She often remembered that building and wondered who owned it. Someone very kind she was sure for in front of every one of the many seats there had been a little carpet-eared puppy-sized dog-bed.

Once I really looked at the sky, I wanted to go on looking; it seemed to draw me towards it and make me listen hard, though there was nothing to listen to, not so much as a twig was stirring.

then we danced the tune through again, without saying one word - indeed, we never spoke all the time we were dancing. I can't remember that I even thought. I seemed to move with a pleasure that was mindless.

It was the time of year, the time of day, for a small insistent sadness to pass into the texture of things. Dusk, silence, iron chill. Something lonely in the bone.

why something and not nothing? why music and not noise?

I'm completely aware of Matisse and what he said, that painters must begin by cutting out their tongues.

This is not a story about your disappointment at my silence. The theme of this story is my pain and my attempts to end it.

I do not want to talk about it.

We drove in silence behind a motorboat being towed by a black pickup. I thought of his remarks about matter and being, those long nights on the deck, half smashed, he and I, transcendence, paroxysm, the end of human consciousness. It seemed so much dead echo now. Point omega. A million years away. The omega point has narrowed, here and now, to the point of a knife as it enters a body. All the man's grand themes funneled down to local grief, one body, out there somewhere, or not.

They passed out of the shade beneath the eaves and flew into sunglare and silence and it was an action she only partly saw, elusive and mutely beautiful, the birds so sunstruck they were consumed by light, disembodied, turned into something sheer and fleet and scatter-bright.

The smoke alarm went off in the hallway upstairs, either to let us know the battery had just died or because the house was on fire. We finished our lunch in silence.

When I get real high I can feel the space between sounds.

What was there to say? It was a matter of silences, not words.

I would think of it with affection because of its scenes of fragmentary beauty, because it brought men closer together through their perversity and fear, because it enabled us to pretend that death could be a tender experience, and because it breached the long silence.

I wanted to become an artist, as I believed them to be, an individual willing to deal in the complexities of truth. I was most successful. I ended in silence, in darkness, sitting still, a maker of objects that imitate my predilection.

There was another pause. We waited to learn if the dialogue was over. Then we set to eating again. We traded unwanted parts in silence, stuck our hands in cartoons of rippled fries. Wilder liked the soft white fries and people picked these out and gave them to him. Denise distributed ketchup in little watery pouches. The interior of the car smelled of grease and licked flesh. We traded parts and gnawed.

Writing was bad for the soul when you got right down to it. It protected your worst tendencies. Narrowed everything to failure and its devastations. Gave your cunning an edge of treachery and your jellyfish heart a reason to fall deeper into silence.

Suppose I try to use an everyday thing, but I can't. Who is at fault: me or the thing? We are apt to blame ourselves, especially if others are able to use it. Suppose the fault really lies in the device, so that lots of people have the same problems. Because everyone perceives the fault to be his or her own, nobody wants to admit to having trouble. This creates a conspiracy of silence, where the feelings of guilt and helplessness among people are kept hidden.

I liked this God very much because you hardly had to talk to it and it never talked back. Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality