Alert Silence Quotes

View a Copycat as a Stray Cat.. They stray through the day hunting down prey. They pick up a scent through steel or cement. They act shy yet their sly. They get around traps, they escape with the bait. When you realize your loss and feel the hard cost without a peep nor a sign, they stand smiling across the finish line. ~ Victoria Addino

There is nothing, she would think, more delicious that the icing of bought chocolate cake, eaten in the silence and privacy of the night. ~ Fay Weldon

And the rain drops kept falling like the sweetest music
leaving tears on the glass,
which is what music does to me
most of the time
but silence too. and rain. ~ Charlotte Eriksson

Digging a ditch where madness gives a bit
Digging a ditch where silence lives
Digging a ditch for when I'm old
Digging this ditch my story's told
Where all these troubles weigh down on me will rise ...
Where all these questions spinning round my head will die ~ Dave Matthews

We usually exchange bare civilities at breakfast and then settle back to loathe each other cordially in silence. ~ Naguib Mahfouz

Babe,' Ranger said. 'Do something with her.'
And he disconnected.
I called Ranger back. 'No,' I said. 'And I need information on Jelly Kantner. His apartment got blown up, and I need to find him.'
And I should do this why?'
Because you like me.'
There was a full beat of silence. 'I do,' Ranger said. 'I like you a lot. Sometimes I'm not sure why. Give me a couple minutes. ~ Janet Evanovich

The voice of protest, of warning, of appeal is never more needed than when the clamor of fife and drum, echoed by the press and too often by the pulpit, is bidding all men fall in and keep step and obey in silence the tyrannous word of command. Then, more than ever, it is the duty of the good citizen not to be silent. ~ Charles Eliot Norton

Where are you going?" I asked, as Frank swung his feet off the bed.

"I'd hate the dear old thing to be disappointed in us," he answered. Sitting up on the side of the ancient bed, he bounced gently up and down, creating a piercing rhythmic squeak. The Hoovering in the hall stopped abruptly. After a minute or two of bouncing, he gave a loud, theatrical groan and collapsed backward with a twang of protesting springs. I giggled helplessly into a pillow, so as not to disturb the breathless silence outside.

Frank waggled his eyebrows at me. "You're supposed to moan ecstatically, not giggle," he admonished in a whisper. "She'll think I'm not a good lover."

"You'll have to keep it up for longer than that, if you expect ecstatic moans," I answered. "Two minutes doesn't deserve any more than a giggle."

"Inconsiderate little wench. I came here for a rest, remember?"

"Lazybones. You'll never manage the next branch on your family tree unless you show a bit more industry than that. ~ Diana Gabaldon

Silence is sometimes the severest criticism. ~ Charles Buxton

Hannah sat down again and leant back against the tall head of the hall chair. He was right. Yes, he was right. She must have been mad to go on like she had. Good Lord! She hadn't given him the message from Mrs Beggs. Again she was on her feet, but her voice still sounded angry as she called down the hall, 'I forgot to give you a message, from Mrs Beggs. She wanted to know if you were going there tomorrow or Saturday.' There was a moment's silence before his door opened and he came back into the hall and went to the telephone. She remained standing where she was until she heard him say, 'Hello, Beggie. ~ Catherine Cookson

Too often, it is only love that makes us engaged enough, alert enough, alive enough to see ~ Cristina Nehring

There are all kinds of silences and each of them means a different thing. There is the silence that comes with morning in a forest, and this is different from the silence of a sleeping city. There is silence after a rainstorm, and before a rainstorm, and these are not the same. There is the silence of emptiness, the silence of fear, the silence of doubt. There is a certain silence that can emanate from a lifeless object as from a chair lately used, or from a piano with old dust upon its keys, or from anything that has answered to the need of a man, for pleasure or for work. This kind of silence can speak. Its voice may be melancholy, but it is not always so; for the chair may have been left by a laughing child or the last notes of the piano may have been raucous and gay. Whatever the mood or the circumstance, the essence of its quality may linger in the silence that follows. It is a soundless echo. ~ Beryl Markham

Seeing all the chattering faces, Paul was suddenly repelled by them. They were cheap masks locked on festering thoughts - voices gabbling to drown out the loud silence in every breast. ~ Frank Herbert

Discipline must come through liberty ... We do not consider an individual disciplined only when he has been rendered as artificially silent as a mute and as immovable as a paralytic. He is an individual annihilated, not disciplined. ~ Maria Montessori

I don't answer. I'm not staging a rebellion here. I stay quiet because I don't want to break down, and I learnt a long time ago that, sometimes, the only way to silence the cries is by making no sound at all. ~ Ally Carter

He said, 'Damianos.'
Before Damen could tell him to rise, he heard it again, echoed in another voice, and then another. It was passing over the gathered men in the courtyard, his name in tones of shock and of awe. The steward beside Nikandros was kneeling. And then four of the men in the front ranks. And then more, dozens of men, rank after rank of soldiers.
And as Damen looked out, the army was dropping to its knees, until the courtyard was a sea of bowed heads, and silence replaced the murmur of voices, the words spoken over and over again.
'He lives. The King's son lives. Damianos.' ~ C.S. Pacat

Silence is so powerful, so important. There is so much to be learned from it. ~ Fred Rogers

One of the worst incidents of that era caused no complaints at all: this was a sort of good-natured firepower demonstration, which occured one Sunday morning about three-thirty. For reasons that were never made clear, I blew out my back windows with five blasts of a 12 gauge shotgun, followed moments later by six rounds from a .44 Magnum. It was a prolonged outburst of heavy firing, drunken laughter, and crashing glass. Yet the neighbors reacted with total silence. For a while I assumed that some freakish wind pocket had absorbed all the noise and carried it out to sea, but after my eviction I learned otherwise. Every one of the shots had been duly recorded on the gossip log. Another tenant in the building told me the landlord was convinced, by all the tales he'd heard, that the interior of my apartment was reduced to rubble by orgies, brawls, fires, and wanton shooting. He had even heard stories about motorcycles being driven in and out the front door. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

In music, silence is more important than sound. ~ Miles Davis

Silence is so steadfast, you know. It is so ample, after all. ~ Alice Fulton

Something not going well, Mr. Boxley?"
The novelist looked back at him in thunderous silence.
"I read your letter," said Stahr. The tone of the pleasant young headmaster was gone. He spoke as to an equal, but with a faint two-edged deference.
"I can't get what I write on paper," broke out Boxley. "You've all been very decent, but it's a sort of conspiracy. Those two hacks you've teamed me with listen to what I say, but they spoil it--they seem to have a vocabulary of about a hundred words."
"Why don't you write it yourself?" asked Stahr.
"I have. I sent you some."
"But it was just talk, back and forth," said Stahr mildly. "Interesting talk but nothing more."
Now it was all the two ghostly attendants could do to hold Boxley in the deep chair. He struggled to get up; he uttered a single quiet bark which had some relation to laughter but non to amusement, and said:
"I don't think you people read things. The men are duelling when the conversation takes place. At the end one of them falls into a well and has to be hauled up in a bucket."
He barked again and subsided.
Would you write that in a book of your own, Mr. Boxley?"
"What? Naturally not."
"You'd consider it too cheap."
"Movie standards are different," said Boxley, hedging.
"Do you ever go to them?"
"No--almost never."
"Isn't it because people are always duelling and falling down wells?"
Yes--and wearing strained facial expressions and talk ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

They heard a lullaby every time a part of her died in Silence. ~ Akshay Vasu

They were shadows in the dark, cocooned in its secrets, bathed in its silence, enspelled by each other. ~ J.D. Robb

But most of all I learned how not to be watched. ... that look of temporary possession that some men gave... And even at twelve years old, the knowledge of it was already in the way I moved my head, my hands, my shoulders. ... I had to stop being alert to the turn of a man's head toward me. Stop glancing up to meet his gaze in fleeting connection. Stop falsely veiling my eyes from his momentary interest. ~ Alison Goodman

A few seconds of silence lapse, and I knew Carter was waiting for me to mention the huge "I'm pregnant" elephant in the room. Fuck that elephant! he can just sit there in the corner eating peanuts and shitting on the tile while giving me looks of disgust. ~ Tara Sivec

Make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.
Wendell Berry ~ Wendell Berry

Build your inner environment. Practice Silence! I remember the wonderful discipline of the Great Ones. When we used to talk and chatter, they would say: "Go back into your inner castle." It was very hard to comprehend then, but now I understand the way of peace ~ Paramahansa Yogananda

Several minutes passed. Several more. Nothing but silence and darkness.
"I think they're gone," Brenda whispered. She flicked on her torch.
"Hello, noses!" a hideous voice yelled from the room.
Then a bloody hand reached through the doorway and grabbed Thomas by the shirt. ~ James Dashner

I could feel the ghosts of all the girls I'd been behind me in the alleyway, creeping in my wake. I could almost hear my own footsteps as an echo. For a moment it was so real that I spooked myself. I stopped and turned to look. There was only silence and darkness. I walked on. ~ Joshilyn Jackson

I rest my forehead against hers, and we sit in a comfortable silence, translating our love through touch. The Princess and the Warrior, I decide in my head. When they tell the story of tomorrow, that is what they shall call it. ~ Tomi Adeyemi

Evening Solace

The human heart has hidden treasures,
In secret kept, in silence sealed;­
The thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures,
Whose charms were broken if revealed.
And days may pass in gay confusion,
And nights in rosy riot fly,
While, lost in Fame's or Wealth's illusion,
The memory of the Past may die.

But, there are hours of lonely musing,
Such as in evening silence come,
When, soft as birds their pinions closing,
The heart's best feelings gather home.
Then in our souls there seems to languish
A tender grief that is not woe;
And thoughts that once wrung groans of anguish,
Now cause but some mild tears to flow.

And feelings, once as strong as passions,
Float softly back-­a faded dream;
Our own sharp griefs and wild sensations,
The tale of others' sufferings seem.
Oh ! when the heart is freshly bleeding,
How longs it for that time to be,
When, through the mist of years receding,
Its woes but live in reverie !

And it can dwell on moonlight glimmer,
On evening shade and loneliness;
And, while the sky grows dim and dimmer,
Feel no untold and strange distress­
Only a deeper impulse given
By lonely hour and darkened room,
To solemn thoughts that soar to heaven,
Seeking a life and world to come. ~ Charlotte Bronte

In a dark silent room
I sit all alone
Feeling only the pain and
With uncontrollable tears

The floral bed sheets I'm covered in
Fails to offer the warmth and comfort

I'm trapped
Underneath the blankets
Screaming and tormenting
I'm passing the nights ~ Jyoti Patel

Just in case you're wondering," Gage says, breaking the silence, "this alliance of ours doesn't mean I like you."
"Feeling's mutual." Julian tosses him a disdainful look. ~ Laura Kreitzer

There's really no such thing as the 'voiceless'. There are only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard. ~ Arundhati Roy

Everything ended in silence. The beasts and spirits heaved a deep breath, broke up their encirclement, and returned to the depths of a forest that had lost its heart. ~ Haruki Murakami

Is it possible to make a living by simply watching light? Monet did. Vermeer did. I believe Vincent did too. They painted light in order to witness the dance between revelation and concealment, exposure and darkness. Perhaps this is what I desire most, to sit and watch the shifting shadows cross the cliff face of sandstone or simply to walk parallel with a path of liquid light called the Colorado River. In the canyon country of southern Utah, these acts of attention are not merely the pastimes of artists, but daily work, work that matters to the whole community.
This living would include becoming a caretaker of silence, a connoisseur of stillness, a listener of wind where each dialect is not only heard but understood. ~ Terry Tempest Williams

People ask, 'Is the science going to run ahead of the ethics?' I don't think that's always the problem. I think it's that the science runs ahead of the politics. Bioethics can alert people to something coming down the road, but it doesn't mean policy and politicians are going to pay attention. They tend to respond when there's an immediate crisis. The job of the ethicist, in some ways, is to warn or be prophetic. You can yell loudly, but you can't necessarily get everybody to leave the cinema, so to speak. ~ Arthur Caplan

You cold or something?' he said. She strained against him; she wanted to pass clear through him: 'It's a chill, it's nothing'; and then, pushing a little away: 'Say you love me.'

I said it.'

No, oh no. You haven't. I was listening. And you never do.'

Well, give me time.'

Please.'

He sat up and glanced at a clock across the room. It was after five. Then decisively he pulled off his windbreaker and began to unlace his shoes.

Aren't you going to, Clyde?'

He grinned back at her. 'Yeah, I'm going to.'

I don't mean that; and what's more, I don't like it: you sound as though you were talking to a whore.'

Come off it, honey. You didn't drag me up here to tell you about love.'

You disgust me,' she said.

Listen to her! She's sore!'

A silence followed that circulated like an aggrieved bird. Clyde said, 'You want to hit me, huh? I kind of like you when you're sore: that's the kind of girl you are,' which made Grady light in his arms when he lifted and kissed her. 'You still want me to say it?' Her head slumped on his shoulder. 'Because I will,' he said, fooling his fingers in her hair. 'Take off your clothes--and I'll tell it to you good. ~ Truman Capote

His eyes narrowed. "First, the marriage
will take place. Just as soon as you've regained your senses and realize that tis the only sensible option left to you."
When she would have opened her mouth
to dispute his assertion, he shocked her by clamping his hand over her mouth.
"You will be silent and allow me to finish. I have doubts that you've ever been able to hold your silence for more than a moment in your entire lifetime," he grumbled.
She huffed but his hand tightened on her
mouth.
"I can only assume that my son overheard
me speaking to my men of our marriage. If you would have but cautioned him to hold his tongue, he would not have repeated it beyond his question to you. But now, you've announced our marriage to the entire clan.
Some might even consider it a proposal. In which case, I accept."
He finished with a grin and then stepped
back, releasing his hold on her mouth.
"Why … you …," she sputtered. She worked
her mouth up and down but nothing would
come out.
A cheer went up from the crowd
assembled.
"A wedding! ~ Maya Banks

She had very much looked forward to a word in private with him. But she forgot, as she usually did, the silence that always came between them in these latter years, whenever they found themselves alone.

The queer sensation in her chest, however, was all too familiar, that mix of pleasure and pain, never one without the other.

She could have done without those feelings. She would have happily gone her entire life never experiencing the pangs of longing and the futility of regret. He made her human - or as human as she was capable of being. And being human was possibly her least favorite aspect of life. ~ Sherry Thomas

We have of late come to understand that sunrise and sunset are to her times of peculiar freedom. When her old self can be manifest without any controlling force subduing or restraining her, or inciting her to action. This mood or condition begins some half hour or more before actual sunrise or sunset, and lasts till either the sun is high, or whilst the clouds are still aglow with the rays streaming above the horizon. At first there is a sort of negative condition, as if some tie were loosened, and then the absolute freedom quickly follows. When, however, the freedom ceases the change back or relapse comes quickly, preceded only by a spell of warning silence. ~ Bram Stoker