Silence Quotes

“With a population of 1.4 billion, China is a lucrative market. But getting into that market isn't cheap. At best, the price of doing business in China is silence; at worst, it's reading talking points straight from the Chinese Communist Party. Beijing is not subtle about it.”

“Words were his delight; Hers, a gay gracefulnessOf dancing and moving. But when to the place Of deep loving (Starlight at midnight)At last they came, Their full communion And consummation,Their complete sphere,Was stillness for her,Silence for him.”

“THIS IS WHYHe will never be given to wonder muchif he was the mouth for some cruel forcethat said it. But if he were(this will comfort her) less than one momentout of millions had he meant it. So many years and so many turnsthey had swerved around the subject.And he will swear for many morethe kitchen and everything in it vanished --the oak table, their guests, the refrigerator doorhe had been surely propped against--all changed to rusted ironwork and ashexcept in the center in her linen caftan:she was not touched.He remembers the silence before he spokeand her nodding a little,as if in the meat of this gray wastehere was the signalfor him to speak what they had long agreed,what somewhere they had prepared together.And this one moment in the desert of ashstretches into forever.They had been having a dinner party.She had been lonely. A friend asked her almost jokingif she had ever felt really crazy,and when she started to unwind her answerin long, lovely sentences like scarves within herhe saw this was the waythey could no longer talk together.And that is when he said it,in front of the guests,because he couldn't bear to hear her.And this is why the guests have leftand she screams as he comes near her.”

“Some actors like encouragement. Some actors prefer to have pressure. And sometimes, for some actors, its better to give your comment by silence, because they are so skillful, so gifted, that they understand without talking too much.”

“Sometimes, silence speaks louder than words. Just because it is peaceful, it doesn’t mean it is still and void, as a few may think. It is insightful, powerful and full of meaning. It is when one can’t lie to oneself. You have to learn to listen to what she is not saying. Listen to her silence. And listen to yours, too.”

“There the black horse stood - his feet planted firm on the ground, afraid to move. His coat was covered in sweat and a stark white rim lined his eyes. All three of us gawked at his sudden silence. The rattling metal gate was now the only sound.”

“You can’t see anything properly while your eyes are blurred with tears. You can’t, in most things, get what you want if you want it too desperately: anyway, you can’t get the best out of it. ‘Now! Let’s have a real good talk’ reduces everyone to silence. ‘I must get a good sleep tonight’ ushers in hours of wakefulness. Delicious drinks are wasted on a really ravenous thirst. Is it similarly the very intensity of the longing that draws the iron curtain, that makes us feel we are staring into a vacuum when we think about our dead? ‘Them as asks’ (at any rate ‘as asks too importunately’) don’t get. Perhapscan’t.”

“I draw a line down the middle of a chalkboard, sketching a male symbol on one side and a female symbol on the other. Then I ask just the men: What steps do you guys take, on a daily basis, to prevent yourselves from being sexually assaulted? At first there is a kind of awkward silence as the men try to figure out if they've been asked a trick question. The silence gives way to a smattering of nervous laughter. Occasionally, a young a guy will raise his hand and say, 'I stay out of prison.' This is typically followed by another moment of laughter, before someone finally raises his hand and soberly states, 'Nothing. I don't think about it.' Then I ask women the same question. What steps do you take on a daily basis to prevent yourselves from being sexually assaulted? Women throughout the audience immediately start raising their hands. As the men sit in stunned silence, the women recount safety precautions they take as part of their daily routine. Here are some of their answers: Hold my keys as a potential weapon. Look in the back seat of the car before getting in. Carry a cell phone. Don't go jogging at night. Lock all the windows when I sleep, even on hot summer nights. Be careful not to drink too much. Don't put my drink down and come back to it; make sure I see it being poured. Own a big dog. Carry Mace or pepper spray. Have an unlisted phone number. Have a man's voice on my answering machine. Park in well-lit areas. Don't use parking garages. Don't get on elevators with only one man, or with a group of men. Vary my route home from work. Watch what I wear. Don't use highway rest areas. Use a home alarm system. Don't wear headphones when jogging. Avoid forests or wooded areas, even in the daytime. Don't take a first-floor apartment. Go out in groups. Own a firearm. Meet men on first dates in public places. Make sure to have a car or cab fare. Don't make eye contact with men on the street. Make assertive eye contact with men on the street.”

“I had lots of good intentions but I wasted them on people who didn't deserve them...”

“When you sit in silence long enough, you learn that silence has a motion. It glides over you without shape or form, exactly like water. Its color is silver. And silence has a sound you hear only after hours of wading inside it. The sound is soft, like flute notes rising up, like the words of glass speaking. Then there comes a point when you must shatter the blindness of its words, the blindness of its light.”

“I believe in destiny Angel. I believe every choice I've made has brought me closer to you. I looked for you for a very long time. I may have fallen from heaven, but I fell for you.”

“With a live audience, it's very clear when you've pushed it too far to the edge - because you fall off that edge and hit bottom with a thud. Nothing abstract about that. You know you went too far when you hear that groan or worse - that silence instead of the big laugh you were expecting following your hilariously edgy joke.”

“But clouds bellied out in the sultry heat, the sky cracked open with a crimson gash, spewed flame-and the ancient forest began to smoke. By morning there was a mass of booming, fiery tongues, a hissing, crashing, howling all around, half the sky black with smoke, and the bloodied sun just barely visible. And what can little men do with their spades, ditches, and pails? The forest is no more, it was devoured by fire: stumps and ash. Perhaps illimitable fields will be plowed here one day, perhaps some new, unheard-of wheat will ripen here and men from Arkansas with shaven faces will weigh in their palms the heavy golden grain. Or perhaps a city will grow up-alive with ringing sound and motion, all stone and crystal and iron-and winged men will come here flying over seas and mountains from all ends of the world. But never again the forest, never again the blue winter silence and the golden silence of summer. And only the tellers of tales will speak in many-colored patterned words about what had been, about wolves and bears and stately green-coated century-old grandfathers, about old Russia; they will speak about all this to us who have seen it with our own eyes ten years - a hundred years! - ago, and to those others, the winged ones, who will come in a hundred years to listen and to marvel at it all as at a fairy tale. ("In Old Russia")”

“The beautiful is as useful as the useful." He added after a moment’s silence, "Perhaps more so.”

“I have to make sure that I don't silence myself about the things that I believe in, because sometimes the fear creeps in of 'What if fewer people watch the show or fewer people hire me because I express my politics?' For me, the commitment is to never be quiet just because I'm in the public eye.”

“And the wind falls silent, and the birds fall silent, and the wild cherry trees no longer shiver and creek.”

“Maybe silence is something we're uncomfortable with as a culture, I don't know.”

“First, silence makes us pilgrims. Secondly, silence guards the fire within. Thirdly, silence teaches us to speak.”

“Learning about sex was a little bit like learning grammar. Every teacher you had assumed some other teacher taught you the year before, or the year before that, as if none of them wanted to talk about it, as if grammar was a bunch of dirty words. A massive silence surrounded dangling participles and infinite clauses, and you learned to fear making mistakes you didn't know how to avoid.”

“poets. have the toughest jobin the universe-of turning silenceinto eloquence.”