“A moderate silence ensued. A neutral-to-slightly-positive silence. True, silence is still silence, except when you think about it too much.”

“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.”

“But the silence spoke volumes.”

“Silence, I discover, is something you can actually hear.”

“A gentle silence descended on them, suggestive of the flow of time.”

“Whatever the composition of this new world might be, I surely have no choice but to accept it in silence.”

“Silence. How long it lasted, I couldn't tell. It might have been five seconds, it might have been a minute. Time wasn't fixed. It wavered, stretched, shrank. Or was it me that wavered, stretched, and shrank in the silence? I was warped in the folds of time, like a reflection in a fun house mirror.”