People love talking about writers as storytellers, but I hate being called that: it suggests I got it from my grandmother or something, when my writing really comes out of silence. If a storyteller came up to me, I’d run away. – Colm Toibin
I am in total silence when I write – I don’t even like the sound of the dryer going – I like the quiet. – Adriana Trigiani
I learned snails don’t have ears. They live in silence. They go slowly. Slowly, slowly in silence. – Billy Collins
I’ve always been the king of silence. I’ve always been a minimalist comedian. I’ve taken my influence from Jack Benny, who was the king of that… I’ve always done ‘less is more.’ – Albert Brooks
I’m going to get a pair of wire-snips, and I’ve also started a new campaign to have blank CDs on jukeboxes so you can play the silence. – Billy Childish
You need not wonder at my knowing all human languages; for, to tell you the truth, I also understand all the secrets of human silence. – Apollonius of Tyana
Once you permit those who are convinced of their own superior rightness to censor and silence and suppress those who hold contrary opinions, just at that moment the citadel has been surrendered. – Archibald MacLeish
In the right circumstances, I’m a big fan of eating alone. Often, on a Sunday evening, I go to a yoga class whose charm is largely that it gives me an alibi to avoid cooking family supper for once. I return to have boiled eggs and soldiers in silence with a book. Bliss. – Bee Wilson
I love ‘Breathless,’ and ‘Paris, Texas,’ and ‘Badlands.’ I was obsessed with those films in my teens. I remember watching ‘Badlands’ and being amazed that there were these scenes in which nobody said anything and the silence told the whole story. – Agyness Deyn
To see the earth as it truly is, small and blue in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see riders on the earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold – brothers who know now they are truly brothers. – Archibald MacLeish
Ever since I came to Congress in 1992, there are those who have been trying to silence my voice. I’ve been told to ‘sit down and shut up’ over and over again. Well, I won’t sit down and I won’t shut up until the full and unvarnished truth is placed before the American people. – Cynthia McKinney
I got quite bored, serving in the bar. Since I was there, the customers wouldn’t talk about women, and with half their subject matter denied them, it was: horses, silence; horses, silence. – Bernadette Devlin
Silence may be golden, but can you think of a better way to entertain someone than to listen to him? – Brigham Young
Some people can’t stand being alone. I love solitude and silence. But when I come out of it, I’m a regular talking machine. It’s all or nothing for me. – Celine Dion
My voice went recently, never happened before, off like a tap. I had to sit in silence for nine days, chalkboard around my neck. Like an old-school mime. Like a kid in the naughty corner. Like a Victorian mute. – Adele
The denial of our duty to act in this case is a denial of our right to act; and if we have no right to act, then may we well be termed the white slaves of the North, for like our brethren in bonds, we must seal our lips in silence and despair. – Angelina Grimke
Comedy club audiences pay up to $25 per person and another fistful of cash to cover a two-drink minimum, so when they don’t like something, they let you know – with silence. – Chris Hardwick
Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth. By simply not mentioning certain subjects… totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion much more effectively than they could have by the most eloquent denunciations. – Aldous Huxley
I think the cinema you like has more to do with silence, and the theater you like has more to do with language. – Ben Kingsley
In these days of our new materialistic Irish state, poetry will have a harder, less picturesque task. But the loss of Yeats and all that boundless activity, in a country where the mind is feared and avoided, leaves a silence which it is painful to contemplate. – Austin Clarke
In Kazahkstan, you would drive five hours outside the city to where roads sort of stop being roads, and it was just in the mountains and deathly quiet. And you could only really hear the clumping of the horses, and it was a sort of a beautiful silence. Like it enveloped you. – Benedict Wong
