“Here the trees surrounded them with an invisible, anechoic blanket, so that every word seemed sucked into silence the moment it was uttered.”

“Oh.” Packard steps back. “I didn’t come in here forthis.”“I didn’t either.”There’s this silence where it seems like one of usought to utter a sentence that begins with the word yet.”

“Every deed and every relationship is surrounded by an atmosphere of silence. Friendship needs no words - it is solitude delivered from the anguish of loneliness.”

“here was a silence between them for a moment, and she wondered if all women, when in love, were torn between two impulses, a longing to throw modesty and reserve to the winds and confess everything, and an equal determination to conceal the love forever, to be cool, aloof, utterly detached, to die rather than admit a thing so personal, so intimate.”

“These days it seemed like the words between them were there only to outline the silences.”

“Words were few and failing between them as though the silence that sat with them had laid its old lips on theirs and sucked them dry of speech. For where could one begin? With the weather? But here there was no weather. These few sad rooms were the old man's world. His horizons were all walls.”