“The voices blend and fuse in clouded silence: silence that is infinite of space: and swiftly, silently the sound is wafted over regions of cycles of cycles of generations that have lived.”

“There is no endless silence of infinite space, for in reality there is no space, no silence and no void.”

“The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.”

“Literary history and the present are dark with silences . . . I have had special need to learn all I could of this over the years, myself so nearly remaining mute and having to let writing die over and over again in me. These are not natural silences--what Keats called agonie ennuyeuse (the tedious agony)--that necessary time for renewal, lying fallow, gestation, in the natural cycle of creation. The silences I speak of here are unnatural: the unnatural thwarting of what struggles to come into being, but cannot.”

“The eternal silence of these infinite spaces fills me with dread.”

“Le silence eternel des ces espaces infinis m'effraie - The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.”