c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
But as i lay there, it only seemes like silence filling my ears. And the thing was, it was so freaking loud.
— Sarah Dessen, Just Listen
Hey Meg! Communication implies sound. Communion doesn't.' He sent her a brief image of walking silently through the woods, the two of them alone together., their feet almost noiseless on the rusty carpet of pine needles. They walked without speaking, without touching, and yet they were as close as it is possible for two human beings to be. They climbed up through the woods, coming out into the brilliant sunlight at the top of the hill. A few sumac trees showed their rusty candles. Mountain laurel, shiny, so dark a green the leaves seemed black in the fierceness of sunlight, pressed toward the woods. Meg and Calvin had stretched out in the thick, late-summer grass, lying on their backs, gazing up into the shimmering blue of sky, a vault interrupted only by a few small clouds.And she had been as happy, she remembered, as it is possible to be, and as close to Calvin as she had ever been to anybody in her life, even Charles Wallace, so close that their separate bodies, daisies and buttercups joining rather than dividing them, seemed a single enjoyment of summer and sun and each other. That was surely the purest kind of thing.Mr. Jenkins had never had that kind of communion with another human being, a communion so rich and full that silence speaks more powerfully than words.
— Madeleine L'Engle, A Wind in the Door
Then there was a silence he had never before experienced: in it, you could hear the years.
— Pascal Mercier, Night Train to Lisbon
There is a silence that comes to a house when no one can sleep. I guess it's the price of love
—  I know it's not cheap.
The silence was killing me.And that's all there ever was. Silence. It was all I knew. Keep quiet. Pretend nothing had happened, that nothing was wrong. And look how well that was turning out.
— J. Lynn, Wait for You
It is well, when in difficulties, to say never a word, neither black nor white. Speech is silver but silence is golden.
— Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
There was a brief silence. I think I heard snow falling.
— Erich Segal, Love Story
Silence is better than unmeaning words.
— Pythagoras
Small, red, and upright he waited,gripping his new bookbag tightin one hand and touching a lucky penny inside his coat pocket with the other,while the first snows of winterfloated down on his eyelashes and covered the branches around him and silencedall trace of the world.
— Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red
The silence between us was so profound I thought part of it must be my fault.
— Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
All too often, when we see injustices, both great and small, we think, That's terrible, but we do nothing. We say nothing. We let other people fight their own battles. We remain silent because silence is easier. Qui tacet consentire videtur is Latin for 'Silence gives consent.' When we say nothing, when we do nothing, we are consenting to these trespasses against us.
— Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist
Do you want to change the world?Then change yourself first.Do you want to change yourself?Then remain completely silent inside the silence-sea.
— Sri Chinmoy, Meditation: Man-perfection in God-satisfaction
It was the same way with silence. This was more than silence. A deaf person can feel vibrations. Here there was nothing to feel.
— Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time
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.
— Anne Spollen, The Shape of Water
Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation...tooting, howling, screeching, booming, crashing, whistling, grinding, and trilling bolster his ego. His anxiety subsides. His inhuman void spreads monstrously like a gray vegetation.
— Jean Arp
Just because I'm no jaw clacker doesn't mean there should be a ruction put up whenever I have sommat to say.
— Tamora Pierce, Mastiff
Why?” he whispered as he leaned over her, supported on one arm. “Why must ye be the one that haunts me dreams? I’ve seen ye weepin’ night after bloody night since the day I sent ye from me palace with yer dress half undone. If I had it to do over again, I’d cut me own right hand off rather than hurt ye so. Will ye never be able to forgive me, Silence love?”“I already have,” she replied, cradling his cheek in her hand. “Long, long ago.
— Elizabeth Hoyt, Scandalous Desires
If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spentIf the unheard, unspokenWord is unspoken, unheard;Still is the spoken word, the Word unheard,The Word without a word, the Word withinThe world and for the world;And the light shone in the darkness andAgainst the Word the unstilled world still whirledAbout the center of the silent Word.Oh my people, what have I done unto thee.Where shall the word be found, where shall the wordResound? Not here, there is not enough silence
— T.S. Eliot
He'd kept this silence because his own secrets were darker, more hidden, and because he believed that his secrets had created hers.
— Kim Edwards, The Memory Keeper's Daughter
To look at life without words is not to lose the ability to form words- to think, remember, and plan. To be silent is not to lose your tongue. On the contrary, it is only through silence that one can discover something new to talk about. One who talked incessantly, without stopping to look and listen, would repeat himself ad nauseam. It is the same with thinking, which is really silent talking. It is not, by itself, open to the discovery of anything new, for its only novelties are simply arrangements of old words and ideas.
— Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety
Nowadays silence is looked on as odd and most of my race has forgotten the beauty of meaning much by saying little. Now tongues work all day by themselves with no help from the mind.
— Toni Morrison, Love
Silence was not the absence of sound but was itself a sound that could be loud or soft, soothing or disturbing, complex or simple.
— Julius Lester, The Autobiography of God
I like my human experience served up with a little silence and restraint. Silence makes experience go further and, when it does die, gives it that dignity common to a thing one had touched and not ravished.
— Djuna Barnes
I didn’t like having to explain to them, so I just shut up, smoked a cigarette, and looked at the sea.
— Albert Camus, The Stranger
The effort of explaining, even of expressing himself, had become, with the years, more and more terrifying to him. Whether from laziness or from inability to find the right words, he had developed almost a passion for silence.
— François Mauriac, Thérèse
He watched her retreat, his eyes lazy, and his body unmoving. A trickle of blood seeped slowly from the corner of his mouth. He let her get nearly out of the room before he spoke, “I may not have the right, Silence, me love,” he drawled so soft she nearly didn’t catch the words. “But I would’ve listened to ye. I would’ve believed ye.
— Elizabeth Hoyt, Scandalous Desires
Sometimes, to remain silent is to lie, since silence can be interpreted as assent.
— Miguel de Unamuno
The pleasure of being a scoundrel can be adequately savored in silence.
— Rémy de Gourmont, The Angels of Perversity
I cannot give up on my values and beliefs for the sake of respecting someone else’s values and morals. Because those values explain who am I. I prefer struggling and even dying for what I believe and what I don’t believe. Silence is not respect; it is not condemning brutality and cruelty, and neglecting your own existence as human being. I will be killed and so many others because of standing against the fallacy and misleading notion of religions. They will torture us and cut us in pieces alive and even won’t stop disrespecting our death bodies; that is how these monsters have been governing for hundreds thousands of years.
— M.F. Moonzajer
You misinterpret everything, even the silence.
— Franz Kafka, The Castle
Never be silent with persons you love and distrust," Mr. Carpenter had said once. "Silence betrays.
— L.M. Montgomery, Emily's Quest
You're mine, Angel, and don't you forget it. Your fights are my fights. What if something bad had happened today? It was bad enough when I thought your ghost was haunting me; I don't think I can handle the real thing.
— Becca Fitzpatrick, Silence
If anything might hurt her, silence would; and I wanted to hurt her.
— John Fowles, The Magus
A day of silence can be a pilgrimage in itself.
— I Heard God Laughing: Poems of Hope and Joy
The advantage of beating a mute is he can't tell on you.
— Thomas Harris, Hannibal Rising
A star shoots bleeding across the skyline, a companion to the black wind. Silence comes sweeping across everything.
— Joë Bousquet
the boldest form of dissent they can manage. Silence. Which says we do not agree. We do not condone. All of this is wrong.
— Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games
I think I will do nothing for a long time but listen,And accrue what I hear into myself...and let sound contribute toward me.
— Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
I waited for her to catch up, and when I did, she slowed down, and I missed seeing the light in her hair. I never told Nadia how much I liked seeing the halo the sunlight made of her hair. Sometimes silence is a habit that hurts.
— E.L. Konigsburg, The View from Saturday
I lay down across her with my face in her breasts and my hand on her. We lay there without moving. But under us all moved, and moved us, gently, up and down, and from side to side.(Pause. Krapp's lips move. No sound.)Past midnight. Never knew such silence. The earth might be uninhabited.
— Samuel Beckett, Krapp's Last Tape & Embers
A creature that hides and “withdraws into its shell,” is preparing a “way out.” This is true of the entire scale of metaphors, from the resurrection of a man in his grave, to the sudden outburst of one who has long been silent. If we remain at the heart of the image under consideration, we have the impression that, by staying in the motionlessness of its shell, the creature is preparing temporal explosions, not to say whirlwinds, of being.
— Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space
It was mortifying to find how strong the habit of idle speech may become in one’s self. One need not always be saying something in this noisy world.
— Sarah Orne Jewett, The Country of the Pointed Firs and Other Stories
Those who have witnessed executions say there is no sound worse than the weeping of mother watching her son being put to death. They're wrong. There is one sound that is worse.  There is silence.
— Carolee Dean, Take Me There
In the life of each of us, I said to myself, there is a place remote and islanded, and given to endless regret or secret happiness; we are each the uncompanioned hermit and recluse of an hour or a day; we understand our fellows of the cell to whatever age of history they may belong.
— Sarah Orne Jewett, The Country of the Pointed Firs
Stop your whining. If you are frightened, be silent. Whining is for prey. It attracts predators. And you are not prey.
— Robin Hobb, Fool's Assassin
Silence fell between them, as tangible as the dark tree shadows that fell across their laps and that now seemed to rest upon them as heavily as though they possessed a measurable weight of their own.
— Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time
There is something hugely civilised about allowing long pauses in a conversation. Very few people can stand that kind of silence.
— James Robertson, And the Land Lay Still
Will ye come with me?” he whispered.And she answered without hesitation. “Yes, please.
— Elizabeth Hoyt, Scandalous Desires
This is a tale of woe. This is a tale of sorrow. A love denied, a love restored, to live beyond tomorrow. Lest we think silence is the place to hide a heavy heart, remember, to love and be loved is life itself without which we are nought.
— Abi Morgan
Somtimes silence can be the loudest thing.
— Ellie Mathews
It never dawned on us that life is unpredictable, that one day, one of us could suddenly cease to exist and what then? What would be the joy in having left so much unsaid? With what memories would we fill the empty silence?
— Isabel  Lopez, Isabel's Hand-Me-Down Dreams
Katy was neither a Methodist nor a Masochist. She was a goddess and the silence of goddesses is genuinely golden. None of your superficial plating. A solid, twenty-two-carat silence all the way through. The Olympian's trap is kept shut, not by an act of willed discretion, but because there's really nothing to say. Goddesses are all of one piece. There's no internal conflict in them. Whereas the lives of people like you and me are one long argument. Desires on one side, woodpeckers on the other. Never a moment of real silence.
— Aldous Huxley, The Genius And The Goddess
He grunted and stirred, withdrawing from her. She only had a moment to be disappointed and then he flipped her to her back and rose over her, powerful and male. He casually parted her legs with his knees and thrust into her again, hot and hard.She gasped at the swift invasion, the lovely feeling, and then his face was next to hers, his big palms cradling her cheeks.“What I want,” he drawled, “is ye. Nothin’ else.
— Elizabeth Hoyt, Scandalous Desires
I was trying to unravel the complicated trigonometry of the radical thought that silence could make up the greatest lie ever told.
— Pat Conroy, South of Broad
I turn off the radio, listen to the quiet. Which has its own, rich sound. Which I knew, but had forgotten. And it is good to remember.
— Elizabeth Berg
I listen to silence. And you have a lot to say. Although I haven't quite figured out what it is yet....I promise not to delve into what makes your silence so loud, if you promise not to walk out on me.
— Rebecca Donovan, Out of Breath
poets. have the toughest jobin the universe-of turning silenceinto eloquence.
— Sanober  Khan
The silence is so deep it hurts our ears
— Haruki Murakami, After Dark
Quartering the topmost branches of one of the tall trees, an invisible bird was striving to make the day seem shorter, exploring with a long-drawn note the solitude that pressed it on every side, but it received at once so unanimous an answer, so powerful a repercussion of silence and of immobility, that one felt it had arrested for all eternity the moment which it had been trying to make pass more quickly.
— Marcel Proust, Swann's Way
It’s the silence that scares me. It’s the blank page on which I can write my own fears.
— Mark  Lawrence, Prince of Thorns
And where there is no Echo there is no description of space or love. There is only silence.
— Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves
Simplicities are enormously complex. Consider the sentence "I love you".
— Richard O. Moore, Writing the Silences
The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.
— David Markson, Wittgenstein's Mistress
I heard silence, silence infinite as the bottom of the ocean, a silence that sealed.
— Anne Spollen, The Shape of Water
She swallowed, watching as the servants and Harry and Bert trooped out of the room. Lad, apparently not the brightest dog in the world, sat down next to Mickey O’Connor and leaned against his leg.Mr. O’Connor looked at the dog, looked at the damp spot growing on his breeches where the dog was leaning, and sighed. “I find me life is not as quiet as it used to be afore ye came to me palace, Mrs. Hollingbrook.”Silence lifted her chin. “You’re a pirate, Mr. O’Connor. I cannot believe your life was ever very quiet.”He gave her an ironic look. “Aye, amazin’, isn’t it? Yet since yer arrival me servants no longer obey me and I return home to find me kitchen flooded.” He crossed to a cupboard and took down a china teapot, a tin of tea, and a teacup. “And me dog smells like a whorehouse.”Silence glanced guiltily at Lad. “The only soap we could find was rose scented.
— Elizabeth Hoyt, Scandalous Desires
There comes a moment when the silence between two people can have the purity of a diamond.
— Philippe Djian, Betty Blue
Isabel had gone silent in a way that shouted the silence to me.
— Maggie Stiefvater, Linger
From the dim regions beyond the mountains at the upper end of our encircled domain, there crept out a narrow and deep river, brighter than all save the eyes of Eleonora; and, winding stealthily about in mazy courses, it passed away, at length, through a shadowy gorge, among hills still dimmer than those whence it had issued. We called it the "River of Silence"; for there seemed to be a hushing influence in its flow. No murmur arose from its bed, and so gently it wandered along, that the pearly pebbles upon which we loved to gaze, far down within its bosom, stirred not at all, but lay in a motionless content, each in its own old station, shining on gloriously forever.
— Edgar Allan Poe, Eleonora
She opened her mouth wide in a silent scream and his release caught him, hard and fast as he kissed her openmouthed. He tore his mouth from hers and shouted his triumph. She was his, now and forevermore, until the end of time, until the seas ran dry and man no longer roamed the earth, amen.His and only his.She slumped against him, the scent of their passion musky in the night air.“Sleep,” he murmured to her, and held her against himself, his cock still buried deep.She was caught and he had no intention of ever letting her go.
— Elizabeth Hoyt, Scandalous Desires
Dear God. She ached, wanting something that she knew was a sin.Wanting a man who was sin itself.
— Elizabeth Hoyt, Scandalous Desires
Humph.” She peered down suspiciously as he parted the leaves to reveal the choke. “That doesn’t look very tasty.”“That’s because it isn’t,” he said. “Pay heed: the artichoke is a shy vegetable. She covers herself in spine-tipped leaves that must be carefully peeled away, and underneath shields her treasure with a barricade o’ soft needles. They must be tenderly, but firmly, scraped aside. Ye must be bold, for if yer not, she’ll never reveal her soft heart.”He finished cutting away the thistles and placed the small, tender heart on the center of her plate.She wrinkled her nose. “That’s it? But it’s so small.”“Ah, and d’ye judge a thing solely upon size alone?”She made a choking sound.
— Elizabeth Hoyt, Scandalous Desires
The butterfly startled at Mary’s gesture and floated up, drifting on the breeze, its wings sparkling blue and bright in the late afternoon sunshine.Silence watched it, enthralled, and then her eyes met Michael’s.A corner of his mouth cocked up. “Welcome home, m’love.
— Elizabeth Hoyt, Scandalous Desires
What silence rules the ghostly hoursThat guard the close of human sleep!(“The Testimony of the Suns”)
— George Sterling, The Thirst of Satan: Poems of Fantasy and Terror
We sit for a few more moments, although there's really nothing left to say. This is new to me, too, an entire conversation that takes place in silence, because the heart has its own language. I will remember what Eric says even though he doesn't say a word. I will tell it to her.
— Jodi Picoult, Vanishing Acts
I dined with Legrandin on the terrace of his house by moonlight. "There is a charming quality, is there not," he said to me, "in this silence; for hearts that are wounded, as mine is, a novelist whom you will read in time to come asserts that there is no remedy but silence and shadow. And you see this, my boy, there comes in all our lives a time, towards which you still have far to go, when the weary eyes can endure but one kind of light, the light which a fine evening like this prepares for us in the stillroom for darkness, when the ears can listen to no music save what the moonlight breathes through the flute of silence.
— Marcel Proust, Swann's Way
To be an artist, you need to exist in a world of silence.
— Louise Bourgeois
There, there, sweetin’,” he murmured into her hair.“He loved me, he truly did,” she gasped.“I know he did,” Michael said.“And I loved him.”“Mm-hmm.”She raised her head, glaring angrily. “You don’t even believe in love. Why are you agreeing with me?”He laughed.“Because”—he leaned down and licked at the tears on her cheeks, his lips brushing softly against her sensitive skin as he spoke, “ye’ve bewitched and bespelled me, my sweet Silence, didn’t ye know? I’ll agree that the sky is pink, that the moon is made o’ marzipan and sugared raisins, and that mermaids swim the muddy waters o’ the Thames, if ye’ll only stop weepin’. Me chest breaks apart and gapes wide open when I see tears in yer pretty eyes. Me lungs, me liver, and me heart cannot stand to be thus exposed.”She stopped breathing. She simply inhaled and stopped, looking at him in wonder. His lips were quirked in a mocking smile, but his eyes—his fathomless black eyes—seemed to hold a great pain as if his strong chest really had been split open.
— Elizabeth Hoyt, Scandalous Desires
Quiet is here and all in me. ("Dress of White Silk")
— Richard Matheson, Collected Stories, Vol. 1
Clench clench these strong teeth in this strong mouth. My mouth. Of my body. In my house. My mouth? Chapped lips swollen and bloody? Dream dreaming wide and thunder? My mouth! My God! This is me speaking. Not mouthing. Not typing and twitching. Not writing a suicide note the length of a novel that will never be finished. I hear voices now but I know they are not the voices of fathers or lovers, or mothers or angels or demons, but the sounds of my own private wars echoing the battles of women before me and near me. No wonder I do not make people comfortable. I am a mirror. I have far too many things to say. (p. 237-238)
— Camilla Gibb, Mouthing the Words
Dream Song:As my eyes Search the prairie, I feel the summer in the spring. Whenever I pause The noise Of the village. 
— Frances Densmore, American Indians and Their Music
What,” came a deep male voice, “is this?”Silence froze, her hand still outstretched, clutching a damp, dirty cloth. Oh, dear Lord. Slowly she raised her eyes and found herself face-to-thighs with Mickey O’Connor’s extremely tight breeches.
— Elizabeth Hoyt, Scandalous Desires
It lasted just a moment, whatever that is. One held breath? An ant's afternoon? It was brief, I can promise that much, for although it's been many years now since my children ruled my life, a mother recalls the measure of the silences.
— Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible
No writer in our time has been more isolated than Kafka, and yet few have achieved communication as well as he did.
— Eugenio Montale
Allowing ourselves to become a nation of silent, secretive, timid citizens is likely to result in a system of democracy and justice that is neither very democratic nor very just.
— Dahlia Lithwick
Quiet had a roof and it had walls around it, and you could sit inside it. She had never thought of silence as a place.One of the friends, Tom Williams told her,'the place is in your heart, Louise. Everything else is just clutter.
— Lloyd Jones, Here at the End of the World We Learn to Dance
At her gesture Michael cursed and caught her hand, falling suddenly atop her.She stared up at him wondering what bedchamber faux pas she’d committed.He groaned at her look. “I’ll let ye pet and play all ye want—after. Now I need”—he pushed her chemise to her waist, parted her thighs, and settled between them—“to be inside ye.
— Elizabeth Hoyt, Scandalous Desires
The post on her left was occupied by Mr. Erskine of Treadley, an old gentleman of considerable charm and culture, who had fallen, however, into bad habits of silence, having, as he explained once to Lady Agatha, said everything that he had to say before he was thirty.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray and Other Writings
Phoebe Marks was a person who never lost her individuality. Silent and self-contained, she seemed to hold herself within herself, and take no colour from the outer world.
— Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Lady Audley's Secret
It would be erroneous to say Sohrab was quiet. Quiet is peace. Tranquility. Quiet is turning down the volume knob on life.Silence is pushing the off button. Shutting it down. All of it. Sohrab's silence wasn't the self imposed silence of those with convictions, of protesters who seek to speak their cause by not speaking at all. It was the silence of one who has taken cover in a dark place, curled up all the edges and tucked them under.
— Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner
Defend myself? I cannot defend the verbal repressions of a boy. A curmudgeonly, cantankerous, ill-tempered, counterfeit boy.
— Coco J. Ginger
All my life I have longed to be alone in a place like this. Even when everything was going well, as it often did. I can say that much. That it often did. I have been lucky. But even then, for instance in the middle of an embrace and someone whispering words in my ear I wanted to hear, I could suddenly get a longing to be in a place where there was only silence. Years might go by and I did not think about it, but that does not mean that I did not long to be there. And now I am here, and it is almost exactly as I had imagined it.
— Per Petterson, Out Stealing Horses
Silence rose and crossed to the connecting door and knocked.The door was opened almost at once.Michael leaned a shoulder against the doorjamb, a wicked smile playing about his sensuous lips. He was so very big this close—every time it surprised her and made her breathless. “Well, now, and when did ye decide to start knockin’ at me door?”Silence fought to keep her face from flaming as she remembered the last time she’d peeked through Michael’s door.She swallowed. “We’re bored.”“Is that so?” Michael glanced down.Silence followed his gaze and saw that Mary had crawled over to investigate. The baby grabbed a handful of her skirt and stood up. She kept one hand on Silence’s skirt and popped two fingers from the other into her mouth as she stared solemnly at Michael.“She looks a rare treat,” Michael said softly, watching the toddler.Silence smiled down at Mary. “She does indeed.”She glanced up and her heart squeezed at the gentle look on Michael’s face.As if she understood she was the subject of conversation, Mary lifted her arms—to Michael. “Up!”Michael arched an eyebrow. “Mouthy little thing, ain’t she?”But he bent and lifted the toddler.
— Elizabeth Hoyt, Scandalous Desires
Silence cleared her throat, fearful her voice would come out a croak. “Is she asleep?”He blinked as if he, too, were waking from a dream, and glanced down at Mary Darling. “Aye, I’m a-thinkin’ she is—she’s stopped fussin’ at me.”Silence felt a huge smile of relief spread over her face. “She was fussing? Oh, how wonderful!”He shot her a look, one eyebrow arching. “Ye’ve taught the child to bully me, too, now?”“Oh, no,” she said hastily, embarrassed. Did he really think she bullied him? What a silly notion!
— Elizabeth Hoyt, Scandalous Desires
Will ye be wantin’ this now, madam?”“Yes, please,” she whispered. She wanted to engrave the sight of him thus, about to make love to her, in her mind.
— Elizabeth Hoyt, Scandalous Desires
There is nothing more harrowing than a deadly hush with the feel of a great noise around it
— Jessie Douglas Kerruish, The Undying Monster: A Tale of the Fifth Dimension
It is silent, an anagram for listen. That is what I do. Listen while she remains silent.
— Eric Jerome Dickey, Genevieve
A moderate silence ensued. A neutral-to-slightly-positive silence. True, silence is still silence, except when you think about it too much.
— Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance
As I said, I don’t expect you to understand—”“And I don’t,” he cut in. “Ye ask how I can live a life that I know will end with the hangman’s noose. Well, at least I am alive. Ye might as well have climbed inside yer husband’s coffin and let yerself be buried with his corpse.”Her hand flashed out before she’d thought about it, the smack against his cheek loud in the little courtyard.Silence had her eyes locked with Michael’s, her chest rising and falling swiftly, but she was aware that Bert and Harry had looked up. Even Mary and Lad had paused in their play.Without taking his gaze from hers, Michael reached out and grasped her hand. He raised her hand to his lips and softly kissed the center of her palm.He looked at her, her hand still at his lips. “Don’t take to yer grave afore yer time, Silence, m’love.
— Elizabeth Hoyt, Scandalous Desires
If I could record them and transmit them to the present age, they would constitute nothing more, nowadays, than dead sounds. They would be, in a word, sounds other than what they actually were, and from what their phonographic labels pretended they were – since it's in ourselves that the silence exists. It was while the sounds were still mysterious that it would have been really interesting to render the mystery palpable and transferable.
— Villiers de L'Isle-Adam, L'Ève Future
I must be getting back to my rooms,” Silence said and stood.Mick frowned with displeasure. “Why?”“Because of Mary Darling.”He shrugged. “One o’ the maids is watchin’ her.”“But if Mary wakes she’ll want me.”“Why?” he asked again, biting into a sweetmeat. This discussion wasn’t to his fancy, but sparring with her was.“Because,” she said slowly, looking at him as if he were lack-witted, “she’s only a baby and she loves me.”“Babies,” Mick pronounced, “are a great trouble.”She shook her head, not bothering to reply this time, and started marching to the door.
— Elizabeth Hoyt, Scandalous Desires
He sat and looked at her. “How is Mary Darling?”“Fast asleep after playing and having a bath,” she said. “The nursery is lovely.”“I’m glad you like it.”“Rose and Annie are obviously practiced nursemaids, and what is even better, they seem to like Mary, and she them.”He grunted. “It would take a hard heart to turn away from my Mary Darling.”A smile curved the corners of her lips. “You didn’t seem too enamored of her when you first met.”“She has a forceful personality, as do I. We just took a bit to get to know one another.
— Elizabeth Hoyt, Scandalous Desires
For a moment she lay still in the big bed, blinking sleepily, loath to move.And then she realized that the angel’s song hadn’t stopped on her waking.Silence sat up. The tantalizingly beautiful voice was coming from the half-open door to Mickey O’Connor’s room.
— Elizabeth Hoyt, Scandalous Desires
She swallowed and looked down at the artichoke petals piled neatly on the side of her plate. Her center certainly felt like it was melting, growing soft and wet just from the rasp of Mr. O’Connor’s voice. Why should a man already devilishly handsome also have a voice that could charm birds from the sky? It simply wasn’t fair.
— Elizabeth Hoyt, Scandalous Desires
Then the silence came back, that awful silence that seemed to just take over.In that silence I kept hearing what I had said--heard it repeating itself over and over again like a stuck record. I wanted it to stop. I didn't want to say things like that anymore. I was sick of that kind of lying. I wished I could say something real.But the silence was too big.
— Avi, Sometimes I Think I Hear My Name
One must not be afraid of a little silence. Some find silence awkward or oppressive. But a relaxed approach to dialogue will include the welcoming of some silence. It is often a devastating question to ask oneself, but it is sometimes important to ask it - 'In saying what I have in mind will I really improve on the silence?
— Robert K. Greenleaf, Servant As Leader
Tristan started the car, pulling carefully out onto the street now that the snow had begun to fall."You seemed so happy this last quarter," P.K. prompted."I was. I fell in love.""And?""It didn't work out--isn't working out." Tristan shook his head. "I'm not ready.""Ah," said P.K. They drove the rest of the way in silence. Tristan thought then that he was lucky; Jonathon and Daniel didn't know how to value a silence, but P.K. made it comfortable. He was glad he was here with P.K. and not alone in the unbearable silence of snow.
— Z.A. Maxfield, Crossing Borders
…each found her greatest safety in silence…
— Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey
What other knowledge will my solitude and muteness bring? What other worlds?
— Kathy Acker, My Mother: Demonology
In the meantime the strike is over, with a remarkably low loss of life. All is quiet, they report, all is quiet.In the deserted harbour there is yet water that laps against the quays. In the dark and silent forest there is a leaf that falls. Behind the polished panelling the white ant eats away the wood. Nothing is ever quiet, except for fools.
— Alan Paton, Cry, the Beloved Country
When I say I love the silence, I'm not being entirely truthful. What I actually love are the abundant, delicate sounds that amplify when I'm silent. These curious creaks, mutters, and hums compel my imagination.
— Richelle E. Goodrich, Making Wishes
The pale water which goes away along paths of silence.
— Georges Rodenbach
An even more pointed example of the the power of the silence tabu in libraries occurred in Duluth in 1981. The police were pursuing a fugitive from justice who ran into the public library. Uniformed police surrounded the building, and the library director was notified that only unobtrusive plainclothesmen were entering the building. Their instructions: “When you find him, overpower him. Quietly.” It was done, and only a few people in the crowded building saw a handcuffed man being ushered past the checkout counter. “See,” one librarian remarked quietly to an amazed person, “that’s what happens when you don’t pay your book fines.
— Ray B. Browne, Forbidden Fruits: Taboos and Tabooism in Culture
Silence is golden but too long a silence an imitation junk
— Amit Abraham
Son of Krypton!
— Kirstin van Dyke, Code Name: Silence
In a state of pseudo-death you restore your substance.
— Marlene Van Niekerk, Agaat
Music is a complete evocation – like a smell. It can bring an entire memory and feeling back to you in a rush. Much more complete than even a photograph. You allow yourself a certain visual distance with photos – not music. It envelopes you – there’s no way to escape it. It’s a great test of sensitivity – the degree of reaction to music. I use it all the time. I call it my ‘Music Test.’ People today don’t want to hear the truth. They’re really afraid of tranquility and silence – they’re afraid they might begin to understand their own motivations too well. They keep a steady stream of noise going to protect themselves, to build a wall against the truth. Like African natives, beating on their drums, rattling their gourds, shaking the bells to scare off evil spirits. As long as there’s enough noise, there’s nothing to fear – or hear. But they will listen. Times are changing.
— Anton Szandor LaVey, The Secret Life of a Satanist: The Authorized Biography of Anton LaVey
Sunset on the water ought to be a quiet and easy time, but I guess some people can't stand a little silence.
— Carl Hiaasen
Under these circumstances, silence among such a large group of people is an uncomfortable thing to experience. Guilt spreads around even to those who have nothing to feel guilty about. Many held their breath. Or, as I heard later, many did what me and my mum did and closed their eyes. We closed our eyes in a bid to remove ourselves.
— Lloyd Jones, Mister Pip
Your silence creates a vacuum for others to fill The key is to stay present and keep listening. The silence of holding steady is different from the silence of holding back.
— Ronald A. Heifetz, The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World
There was only silence. It was the silence of matter caught in the act and embarrassed. There were no cells moving, and yet there were cells. I could see the shape of the land, how it lay holding silence. Its poise and its stillness were unendurable, like the ring of the silence you hear in your skull when you're little and notice you're living the ring which resumes later in life when you're sick.
— Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters
It was a stillness so profound one had to adjust one’s hearing to it.....The silence seemed to be trying to tell him something about itself.
— Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 BOOK 1
If a cone had dropped on velvet needles, if a star had lain a silver track across the sky, if the dead had turned in their graves - I swear, I would have heard it, that's how silent it all was. 
— Martha Grimes
Silence fell like a hammer made of feathers. It left holes in the shape of the sound of the sea.
— Terry Pratchett, Nation
I shouted into the phone, but there was no reply. Silence floated up from the receiver like smoke from the mouth of a gun.
— Haruki Murakami, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
Silence hung around the corners, draped like spider webs across all surfaces and hanging like smog in the air.
— Jennifer  Perry
Under all speech that is good for anything there lies a silence that is better.
— Thomas Carlyle
I have a sense of exile from thought, a nostalgia of the quiet room and balanced mind. I am a writer, and there comes a time when that which I write has to belong to me, has to be written alone and in silence, with no one looking over my shoulder, no one telling me a better way to write it. It doesn't have to be great writing, it doesn't even have to be terribly good. It just has to be mine.
— Raymond Chandler
SilenceTHERE is a silence where hath been no sound,	 There is a silence where no sound may be,	 In the cold grave—under the deep, deep sea,	 Or in wide desert where no life is found,	 Which hath been mute, and still must sleep profound;	 No voice is hush'd—no life treads silently,	 But clouds and cloudy shadows wander free,	 That never spoke, over the idle ground:	 But in green ruins, in the desolate walls	 Of antique palaces, where Man hath been,	 Though the dun fox or wild hyæna calls,	 And owls, that flit continually between,	 Shriek to the echo, and the low winds moan—	 There the true Silence is, self-conscious and alone.
— Thomas Hood
I am speechless: what can I answer?I put hand on my mouth.I have said too much already
— now I will speak no more.
The silence is not suppression; instead, it is all there is.
— Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters
In the seventh century, Isaac the Syrian wrote about 'stillness,' which in his writings has been summarized as 'a deliberate denial of the gift of words for the sake of achieving inner silence, in the midst of which a person can hear the presence of God. It is standing unceasingly, silent, and prayerfully before God.
— Kenneth Bailey, Jacob and the Prodigal: How Jesus Re-told Israel's Story
Kyoko sniffs, unable to speak. Sometimes saying nothing means most of all.
— Sandy Fussell, Shaolin Tiger
... isn't breaking a supervillian out of jail a little ... much?
— Kirstin van Dyke, Code Name: Silence
Silence beyond being the answer to fools, is sometimes the answer of fools.
— Prinx Maurice
The closest one person can get to another is through silence.
— Bohumil Hrabal, I Served the King of England
I once traveled with a guide who was taking me to Faya. He didn't speak for nine hours. At the end of it he pointed to the horizon and said, 'Faya!' That was a good day.
— Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient
Only he who knows how to speak can be silent.
— Jean-Paul Sartre, We Have Only This Life to Live
Around them there was nothing but silence, as if all the world were holding its breath.
— Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass
Silence is a magical sleep where you find the solutions in your dreams!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
He himself was almost never bored, and there was no man with whom it would have been a greater mistake to suppose that silence meant displeasure.
— Henry James, The American
Talking is good. It's good to disturb the silence.
— Marty Rubin
The most dangerous silence is the one where the impending danger is more silent than the silence there!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
Don't be afraid to talk because in the long run, you will be afraid that you were too silent.
— Anthony T. Hincks
When once misfortune enters a house, silence is in vain.
— Maurice Maeterlinck, Pelleas and Melisande
Silence doesn’t have to be a major pilgrimage into the wilderness in order to find a solitary space. Everyday tasks such as driving around town, folding laundry, preparing food, washing dishes, or taking walks can all provide a measure of solitude each day when approached with the right mindset and a commitment to shut off televisions, computers, tablets, smartphones, radios, and anything else that could interrupt silence.
— Ed Cyzewski, Flee, Be Silent, Pray: An Anxious Evangelical Finds Peace with God through Contemplative Prayer
Celebration toward the east fosters silence. Indeed, there is less temptation for the celebrant to monopolize the conversation. Facing the Lord, he is less tempted to become a professor giving a lesson throughout the Mass, reducing the altar to a podium centered on the microphone instead of the Cross.
— Robert Sarah, The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise
Coz," he said. "You really must learn to shut your mouth from time to time. You'll taste less shoe letter.
— Jim Butcher, The Aeronaut's Windlass
He sometimes halted without saying anything. Either he had finally nothing to say or while having something to say he finally decided not to say it.
— Samuel Beckett, Texts for Nothing and Other Shorter Prose 1950-1976
Silence was my sister's weapon. When people hurt or angered her, she never got loud like Mom or mean and smart-ass like me. Silence was how she fought back. It wasn't passive, or an act of helplessness: it was a cold cruel withering blade, lasting far longer than my mother's rage or my own antagonism, strong enough to make us practically beg for forgiveness every time. Except now her weapon had gone haywire, turned on herself, driven her from her home and her support system and into what-knew-what kind of danger.
— Sam J. Miller, The Art of Starving
He feels the word close enough to absorb it
— an exorcised silence creating cliffsides to escape to and reverse.
Silence stands between the trees, waiting for the wind's roar.
— Marty Rubin
That summer lying in the long grass with my head propped up against the back of a saddle, with the zenith above me and the drop of distance below, I listened to the mountain silence until I could hear as far into it as the faintest clink of a cowbell. In the mountains, what might be out of sight had never really gone away. Like the mountain, that distant bell would always be there. It would keep reminding.
— Eudora Welty, On Writing
I never speak in silence.
— Anthony T Hincks
Silence is not a fucking virtue. It’s a disease—­a cancer that eats away at you and fucks with your head.
— Jennifer L. Armentrout, Be with Me
Silence is a language in itself. Perhaps the loudest and most beautiful of them all!
— Tina Sequeira, SOUL SOJOURN
It was almost as if he was giving her his silence, so that all of her anger had a place to go.
— Jodi Lynn Anderson, Tiger Lily
Silence isn't always agreement. Sometimes people no longer argue because they no longer care.
— Joyce Rachelle
Afraid of offending with an off word or the slightest insensitivity, I keep an unobtrusive and silent distance. Nevertheless, my pursed lips and offish stance are perceived as cold, managing to offend all.
— Richelle E. Goodrich, Slaying Dragons
Life’s most precious moments are not all loud or uproarious. Silence and stillness has its own virtues.
— Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls
If my journey was so easy, I would have missed out on life's invaluable lessons. From misery I learnt to comfort those in tears, from lack I learnt to give to the needy; from uncertainty I learnt to understand others and from my silence I learnt to listen to the voiceless.
— Gift Gugu Mona
Remember, thy own shadow isn't far from thyself; in reality, it always follows thee, even in complete darkness (and in silence).
— Sandeep N. Tripathi
It was better to leave the space empty of words than to choose the wrong ones.
— Robin Hobb, Fool's Assassin
Silence is what allows people to suffer without recourse, what allows hypocrisies and lies to grow and flourish, crimes to go unpunished.
— Rebecca Solnit, The Mother of All Questions
She found herself too visible in silence
—  exposed in the quiet of reflection.
He seemed not to know the uses of silence.
— Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven
When the truth is known, all descriptions cease, and silence alone remains. #Yoga Vasistha
— Abhishek Kumar, Stardust Family - We Are One!
Time will tell...Time will answer...Silence... and time....
— Deyth Banger
What is this life! you cry out. Only silence answers, and it is eloquent. Shining eyes open in the darkness, the eyes of that face, smiling too much and too long. Without a word, that smile coerces from you an old question: Was it all so useless? The smile pushes up at its edges, too rigid to be real. You cannot look away as it widens past all natural proportion. There is nothing left but that big smile. It is the last thing you see: a great gaping mouth like the entrance to a carnival ride. Then: the sense of being swallowed. That is the story; that is the plot of our lives.
— Thomas Ligotti, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race
The person who has read just a single book argues. The person who has read the entire library watches in silence.
— Unknown
When asked, 'What did you want to say in this work?' he would answer, 'I've said what I've said.'This made sense in where everyone assumed music had a meaning - but where saying the wrong thing could get a person killed.-Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad
— M.T. Anderson
. . . I am in my hermitage perhaps 70 to 80 percent of the time. I relish and enjoy time with others. I have been called "the sociable hermit." Ironically, lengthy solitude often invokes a verbal avalanche when I find myself with a dear and treasured friend, or at a rare social occasion. . . . Solitaries, I suppose, are not always introverts.
— Barbara Erakko Taylor, Silent Dwellers: Embracing the Solitary Life
For the modern solitary, the quest for silence has vastly broader boundaries than what one's predecessors faced. Solitude is real only when it is relative to the world in which it is lived. It is unreal if attempted in fantasy--as though telephones and fax machines, the Internet and E-mail did not exist. (36)
— Barbara Erakko Taylor, Silent Dwellers: Embracing the Solitary Life
Things always happen as they should and when they should. Our intuition provides us with guidance on our true purpose. These messages come from the heart. We can only hear them when we're silent not through a cluttered mind.
— Nanette Mathews
There was cruelty in silence, and isolation made it worse.
— Jordan Dane
The silence encompassing the feeling so juvenile, veiling everything but a sham smile.
— Parul Agrawal
Never allow yourself to believe you should be silent.
— Samantha Shannon, The Song Rising
That silence intimidates puzzles me. Silence is to me normal, comfortable." Later he added, "I will admit to feeling a little contempt for those who can't keep quiet.
— Michael Finkel, The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit
There was no echo, no reverberation. If anything the room ate sound. It swallowed her voice, her words, and her eternal, inadequate apology. But not her memories. She would never be rid of those.
— Laini Taylor, Strange the Dreamer
Some secrets are heavy because they aren't yours to tell.
— Joyce Rachelle
Still, the ten days were enough for me to see, as if peering over the edge of a well, that silence could be mystical, and that if you dared, diving fully into your inner depths might be both profound and disturbing.
— Michael Finkel, The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit
Silence is not a reply. However, it shows a way of avoiding further discussion and critical questions and the escape from the reality or idiocy, since it is a personal diplomacy.
— Ehsan Sehgal
Reading your sonnets?” asked Orphu. Mahnmut closed the book. “How’d you know? Have you taken up telepathy now that you’ve lost your eyes?” “Not yet,” rumbled the Ionian. Orphu’s great crab shell was lashed to the deck ten meters from where Mahnmut sat near the bow. “Some of your silences are more literary than others, is all.
— Dan Simmons, Ilium