Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.

A painter paints a picture on a canvas, but musicians paint their pictures on silence.

See how nature - trees, flowers, grass - grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence. . . We need silence to be able to touch souls.

Let me go since all your words are bitter, and the very light of the sun is cold to me. Lead me to my vigil, where I must have neither love nor lamentation; no song, but silence.

A lot of people get flipped out if you're quiet. They say stuff like, "What are you thinking?" And if they don't start interrogating you, they start talking, going on and on about stuff that's totally irrelevant, and the silence gets so big and loud that it's scary.

I had condemned her by my silence, condemned us both.

The attempt to silence a man is the greatest honor you can give him. It means that you recognize his superiority to yourself.

Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of yourself. Define yourself.

The real in us silent; the acquired is talkative.

I am filling the room with words from my pen. Yet there is silence. Always silence.

The more I write, the more the silence seems to be eating away at me.

The black rosary, with its silver Christ, lies unblessed in my hand, for I am the unbeliever. Oh Mary, permit me this grace, this crossing over, although I am ugly, submerged in my own past and my own madness. Although there are chairs, I lie on the floor. Oh Mary, open your eyelids. I am in the domain of silence, the kingdom of the crazy and the sleeper.

Do you like me? How absurd! What's a question like that? What's a silence like that? And what am I hanging around for, riddled with what his silence said? It was you untying the snarls and knots, the webs, all bloody and gluey; you with your twelve tongues and twelve wings, beating, wresting, beating, beating your way out of childhood, that airless net that fastened you down.
Since then, I was more silent, though you had gone miles away, tearing down, rebuilding the fortress. I was there, but could do nothing but guard the city, lest it break. I was silent. I had a strange idea I could overhear, but that your voice, tongue, wing belonged solely to you. The Lord was silent, too. I did not know if he could keep you whole, where I, miles away, yet head on your chest, could do nothing. Not a single thing. The wings of the watchman, if I spoke, would hurt the bird of your soul.

When we walk in the sun, our shadows are like barges of silence.

The silence was in him and it rose like joy, like the beginning. When he opened his eyes, the silence had spread, the sheets of darkness seemed endless, the sheets he held in his hand.

I wished you would speak, but you didn't. I knew then that you might remain silent forever.

Most people know how to keep silent, but few of us know when.

There are times when silence has the loudest voice.

Of those who say nothing, few are silent.