“The Waystone was his, just as the third silence was his. This was appropriate, as it was the greatest silence of the three, wrapping the others inside itself. It was deep and wide as autumn’s ending. It was heavy as a great river-smooth stone. It was the patient, cut-flower sound of a man who is waiting to die.”

“It was the patient, cut-flower sound of a man who is waiting to die.”

“Dawn was coming. The Waystone Inn lay in silence, and it was a silence of three parts.”

“We live between the two great silences: the silence that existed before the world began, and the silence that waits for us at the end of all things.”

“To me so deep a silence portends some dread event; a clamorous sorrow wastes itself in sound.”

“Quoting from Thomas MertonDialogues With SilenceThe true contemplative is not one who prepares his mind for a particular message that he wants or expects to hear, but is one who remains empty because he knows that he can never expect to anticipate the words that will transform his darkness into light. He does not even anticipate a special kind of transformation. He does not demand light instead of darkness. He waits on the Word of God in silence, and, when he is answered it is not so much by a word that bursts into his silence. It is by his silence itself, suddenly, inexplicably revealing itself to him as a word of great power, full of the voice of God. (17)”