“When the world stilled again, ominous silence reigned. Scratch that, not silence exactly. The van’s radiator hissed, and someone was groaning. Oh, right. That was me.”

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

“Words stand between silence and silence: between the silence of things and the silence of our own being. Between the silence of the world and the silence of God. When we have really met and known the world in silence, words do not separate us from the world nor from other men, nor from God, nor from ourselves because we no longer trust entirely in language to contain reality.”

“After all the screaming in our house, there reigned, that winter on Middlesex, only silence. A silence so profound that, like the left foot of the President’s secretary, it erased portions of the official record.”

“On the exoteric level the traditions are irreconcilable. On the esoteric, experiential level of the heart reigns an eloquent, reverential silence.”

“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.”