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

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

“The world is a dream, you say, and it’s lovely, sometimes. Sunset. Clouds. Sky.”“No. The image is a dream. The beauty is real. Can you see the difference?”

“The intimacy of the detail - why The Silence of the Lambs is quite possibly the Thriller Writer's bible.”

“I don’t know: perhaps it’s a dream, all a dream. (That would surprise me.) I’ll wake, in the silence, and never sleep again. (It will be I?) Or dream (dream again), dream of a silence, a dream silence, full of murmurs (I don’t know, that’s all words), never wake (all words, there’s nothing else).You must go on, that’s all I know.They’re going to stop, I know that well: I can feel it. They’re going to abandon me. It will be the silence, for a moment (a good few moments). Or it will be mine? The lasting one, that didn’t last, that still lasts? It will be I?You must go on.I can’t go on.You must go on.I’ll go on. You must say words, as long as there are any - until they find me, until they say me. (Strange pain, strange sin!) You must go on. Perhaps it’s done already. Perhaps they have said me already. Perhaps they have carried me to the threshold of my story, before the door that opens on my story. (That would surprise me, if it opens.)It will be I? It will be the silence, where I am? I don’t know, I’ll never know: in the silence you don’t know.You must go on.I can’t go on.I’ll go on.”

“Silence has many advantages. When you do not speak, other people presume you to be deaf or feeble-minded and promptly make a show of their own limitations.”