“It was the same way with silence. This was more than silence. A deaf person can feel vibrations. Here there was nothing to feel.”

“Silence has sometimes a remarkable power of showing itself as the disembodied soul of feeling wandering without its carcase, and it is then more impressive than speech.”

“Spiteful words can hurt your feelings but silence breaks your heart.”

“I want to put silencers on all guns. That way war will be nothing more than a whisper in the future. And all those who are caught whispering will be shot.”

“You see, the deaf have an intimacy with silence. It’s there in their dreams.”

“We can learn to work and speak when we are afraid in the same way we have learned to work and speak when we are tired. For we have been socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language and definition, and while we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us. (227)”