“Now the Sirens have a still more fatal weapon than their song, namely their silence... someone might possibly have escaped from their singing; but from their silence, certainly never.”

“It would never have crossed her mind spontaneously that somebody might actually need silence. That silence helps you to go inward, that anyone who is interested in something more than just life outside actually needs silence.”

“Comme certaines musiquesLe poème fait chanter le silence,Amène jusqu’à toucherUn autre silence,Encore plus silence.As certain musicThe poem makes sing to silenceBring to the point of touchingAnother silenceEven more silence.”

“If ever you do go back, what is it you want of Evesham?""Do I know? [...] The silence, it might be ... or the stillness. To have no more running to do ... to have arrived, and have no more need to run. The appetite changes. Now I think it would be a beautiful thing to be still.”

“There are all kinds of silences and each of them means a different thing. There is the silence that comes with morning in a forest, and this is different from the silence of a sleeping city. There is silence after a rainstorm, and before a rainstorm, and these are not the same. There is the silence of emptiness, the silence of fear, the silence of doubt. There is a certain silence that can emanate from a lifeless object as from a chair lately used, or from a piano with old dust upon its keys, or from anything that has answered to the need of a man, for pleasure or for work. This kind of silence can speak. Its voice may be melancholy, but it is not always so; for the chair may have been left by a laughing child or the last notes of the piano may have been raucous and gay. Whatever the mood or the circumstance, the essence of its quality may linger in the silence that follows. It is a soundless echo.”

“Silence was his escape, but silence is rarely a refuge. His thoughts still haunted him.”