Silenced Quotes

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

Setting aside the truth value of the UFO phenomenon, it is an interesting sociological reality that so many people are unwilling to discuss the most - and at times traumatic - experience of their lives. What does it say about our society that this is so? My feeling is that, by its very nature, it represents a form of repression. If you are a reader who believes UFOs to be nonsense of some sort, I can nevertheless assure you that you have a friend or relation who has seen one. They have simply learned not to discuss it. Many people can live perfectly well within the constraints of repression and denial; they simply learn to shut off certain parts of their mind. It is sad, but it happens all of the time.

But not everyone is the same. Not everyone is willing to do this, or even can do this. By any estimate, there are may millions of people on this planet who have had a powerful UFO experience. They cannot and will not be silenced indefinitely. ~ Richard M. Dolan

There's a beauty in birds on the wing,
That stirs the heart and makes earthbound creatures
Long for flight, but the larks above the battlefield
Are silenced by the sounds of war.
I have watched birds out at sea,
Catching the wind,
And longed to follow them,
To some safe place far from here. ~ Charles Todd

The trees down the boulevard stand naked in thought,
Their abundant summery wordage silenced, caught
In the grim undertow; naked the trees confront
Implacable winter's long, cross-questioning brunt. ~ D.H. Lawrence

To spin the web and not be caught in it, to create the world, to create your own life, to rule your fate, to name the grandmothers as well as the fathers, to draw nets and not straight lines, to be a maker as well as a cleaner, to be able to sing and not be silenced, to take down the veil and appear: all these are the banners on the laundry line I hang out. ~ Rebecca Solnit

I will not be silenced or deterred. ~ Martin McGuinness

Driving home to Iowa from Marion, Indiana, I went through Chicago, sure, but it was far easier to find a field than a town. Far easier to find empty spaces than people. Even in my town, Cedar Rapids, the second-largest city in Iowa, you are never more than minutes from a cornfield. It's a bigness that can feel limiting if you are the only one of you that you see. But the internet is an equalizer - bringing together voices that once felt alone, realigning boundaries, creating spaces where there were none before.

There is a danger too of creating ideological bubbles. Of filtering out dissent. It's a criticism that was leveled heavily against blue states after the 2016 election. But when you are in the minority - the voice that is silenced - you are never in a bubble, even if you try. And finding a place where you don't have to fight for acceptance, where you can just be accepted, even if that is online is the difference between pain and hope. ~ Lyz Lenz

At the negotiations in Irvine, it became clear to me that there was no side I could stand on. The English despise me and my countrymen don't trust me. Wallace and the others are rebelling in the name of Balliol. I cannot fight with them. It would be as much a betrayal of my oath as when I was fighting for England. I know what I must do. What I should have done months ago.'
Robert felt embarrassed, about to say the words. Inside, his father's voice berated him, but he silenced it. 'I want you to weave my destiny,' he finished. 'As you did for my grandfather.'
When she spoke, her voice was low. 'And what is your destiny?'
He met her eyes now, all hesitation and embarrassment gone. 'To be King of Scotland.'
A smile appeared at the corners of her mouth. It wasn't a soft smile. It was hard and dangerous. 'I will need something of yours,' she said, rising. ~ Robyn Young

Writing, as most art, is considered to be essentially superfluous. Who is an artist before a surgeon? Or a scientist? But the fact that tyrants and political forces of every age have been threatened by art again and again, condemned it as degenerate or poisonous, and have silenced, brutalized, or murdered artists because of their work only serves to illustrate how significant art is, that it is our one greatest power. I would even go so far as to say that the tyrant 'understands' art more than the devotee, for the latter is generally too 'pious' and adoring, almost like a simple-minded believer overwrought by faith who simply loves and finds everything 'great,' whereas the former suffers the transformative threat of art more, is even endangered by it, hence their terror. ~ Rainer J. Hanshe

Today, our actions must be motivated only by our intense desire to achieve a just and lasting peace. The compassion and charity of the American people should be reflected in this legislation, though sadly, they are silenced. ~ Nick Rahall

Even now, you refused to be pixelated, forgotten, silenced, erased. Not that I wanted to erase you. The opposite. I wanted the opposite. ~ David Levithan

Bumblestripe, Lionblaze, Cinderheart, and Purdy bore Mousefur among them, the old she-cat silenced forever, her jaws hanging slightly open as if she had something more to say. Firestar was carried by Sandstorm, Graystripe, Squirrelflight, and Millie. Dovewing heard the gray tabby she-cat murmur, We were born as kittypets, but look at us now, my precious friend. ~ Erin Hunter

After the merch booth has closed, I join the melee, but am nudged to the middle of the mob, and then the back, where I stand on my toes to watch person after person embrace my husband. Jeff's words from our pseudo-poker game rise to the surface of my consciousness and bob there, refusing to be silenced. This is the very definition of being a supporting character. But I don't really mind that I'm this far away - I can still see the smile on his face as bright as a spotlight, and his joy seems to vibrate across the distance. Surely everyone knows what a big deal this must be to him, but I still look at him and remember the subway musician hunched over his guitar, sitting on a narrow stool, guitar case open at his feet. And now here he is, wearing a suit, standing beside Ramón Martín, and getting the praise and adoration of an entire cast and crew. I'm still on the sidelines, but I helped make that happen. ~ Christina Lauren

Where the road meets the Gulf, it skirts the beach for miles. I wish it ran straight over the water, like the pictures of the bridge I've seen that links the Florida Keys to the coast, wish it was an endless concrete plank that ran out over the stormy blue water of the world to circle the globe, so I could lie like this forever, feeling the fine hair on his arm, my kids silenced, not even there, his fingers on my arm drawing circles and lines that I decipher, him writing his name on me, claiming me. The world is a tangle of jewels and gold spinning and throwing off sparks. I'm already home. ~ Jesmyn Ward

Winter descended on Erl and gripped the forest, holding the small twigs stiff and still: in the valley it silenced the stream; and in the fields of the oxen the grass was brittle as earthenware, and the breath of the beasts went up like the smoke of encampments. And Orion still went to the woods whenever Oth would take him, and sometimes he went with Threl. When he went with Oth the wood was full of the glamour of the beasts that Oth hunted, and the splendour of the great stags seemed to haunt the gloom of far hollows; but when he went with Threl a mystery haunted the wood, so that one could not say what creature might not appear, nor what haunted and hid by every enormous bole. What beasts there were in the wood even Threl did not know: many kinds fell to his subtlety, but who knew if these were all? ~ Lord Dunsany

Before I could reply, he had picked me up, literally swept me off my feet, and kissed me. And afterwards, when I tried to speak, he silenced me in much the same manner. It was a shock (but not at all distasteful) to be so caught up. Later - when he at last set me down - he handled me more gently. He took of my glasses and told me that he loved me. ~ Jennifer Paynter

Art gives life to what history killed. Art gives voice to what history denied, silenced, or persecuted. Art brings truth to the lies of history. ~ Carlos Fuentes

We must be courageous in speaking out on the issues that concern us:
We must not bend under the weight of spurious arguments
invoking culture or traditional values.
No value worth the name supports the oppression
and enslavement of women.
The function of culture and tradition is to provide
a framework for human well-being.
If they are used against us, we will reject them, and move on. We will not allow ourselves to be silenced. ~ Nafis Sadik

I write incessantly, I'm very productive, I write for a dozen publications and blogs and websites. A lot of very hardcore political stuff. I write a weekly feature. I express myself. But when time comes to make music [with the] same absolutely unleashing of total honesty zero inhibitions, it just flows like a stream of conscientiousness because I will not be silenced no matter what my point might be. ~ Ted Nugent

Our "increasing mental sickness" may find expres­sion in neurotic symptoms. These symptoms are con­spicuous and extremely distressing. But "let us beware," says Dr. Fromm, "of defining mental hygiene as the prevention of symptoms. Symptoms as such are not our enemy, but our friend; where there are symp­toms there is conflict, and conflict always indicates that the forces of life which strive for integration and happiness are still fighting." The really hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. "Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been si­lenced so early in their lives, that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does." They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their per­fect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness. These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted, still cherish "the illusion of indi­viduality," but in fact they have been to a great extent deindividualized. Their conformity is developing into something like uniformity. But "uniformity and free­dom are incompatible. Uniformity and mental health are incompatible too. . . . Man is not made to be an automaton, and if he becom ~ Aldous Huxley

Restless thoughts are a kind of mental 'static' which must be silenced if we are to hear the whispers of our inner self. ~ John Novak

We must guard against being too individualistic.... Christ is born to bring hope and joy also to whole communities of people--the exiles, the deported, the tortured, the silenced. ~ William Sloane Coffin

Never let your soul be silenced. Live life out loud. Every day tell your truth not with words but with actions from your heart. ~ Cory Booker

He silenced the thought, already itching to get inside her, his tongue, or his fingers, or his cock. After all these years of wanting, he would gladly accept whatever access to her body she gave him. He just wanted in. ~ Amber Belldene

Here are young women with more opportunities, more liberties than almost any women in history and at that moment we tell them they're short-changed silenced victims of a patriarchy? It's defeatist and demoralising. ~ Christina Hoff Sommers

Her insecurity, so great and so ordinary, silenced him. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

She took his verbal punches and she felt silenced under the mental prison that he had held her in. She looked perfect on the outside, but her body expressed her pain. Her soul was crystallized, permanently on survival-mode. He thought he was smart, but he had no idea that he was married to a lotus. She rose every time because she knew he could not take away her worth. She knew she was meant to have more. She loved herself through the horror, and regained her ability to keep walking, to keep breathing, to keep living. She rose peacefully like the lotus, elegant and full of class, untouched by his filthy, meaningless existence... and that had always left him powerless. ~ Karen A. Baquiran

I like to think that I'm giving a voice to the silenced ... ~ Selima Hill

I firmly believe today that the only way to stop violence against women is to speak out and refused to be silenced. ~ Zainab Salbi

Plato, along with the latest pope, recognised how dangerous it is to have an artist around making mischief, stirring things up with the spoon of truth and intoxicant of fantasy and magic. And so, for crossing the line, and for stealing God's fire, artists were banned, imprisoned, condemned, silenced, killed – they always would be, these sometimes Christs of the page. ~ Hanif Kureishi

Criticism of the diet-heart hypothesis, which had been lively until the 1984 Consensus Conference, was afterward virtually silenced in the United States. ~ Nina Teicholz

I'm out there arguing the Labor case. I will do it anywhere and everywhere that I can. I do it within various communities across Australia where I am able to make a positive contribution. And let me tell you, my voice won't be silenced in the public debate because the issue at stake for Australia are so stark. ~ Kevin Rudd

A man is the history of his breaths and thoughts, acts, atoms and wounds, love indifference and dislike, also of his race and nation, the soil that fed him and his forbears, the stones and sands of his familiar places, long-silenced battles and struggles of conscience, of the smiles of girls and the slow utterance of old women, of accidents and the gradual action of inexorable law, of all this and something else, too, a single flame which in every way obeys the laws that pertain to Fire itself, and yet is lit and put out from one moment to the next, and can never be relumed in the whole waste of time to come. ~ A.S. Byatt

An enemy soldier never seemed to be alone
one human being like any other
but followed, crushed from all directions by innumerable ghosts, the missing and the dead. Speaking to him wasn't like speaking to a solitary man but to an invisible multitude; nothing that was said was either spoken or heard with simplicity: there was always that strange sensation of being no more than lips that spoke for so many others, others who had been silenced. ~ Irene Nemirovsky

In forward bends, one uses the outer mind while in backbends the outer mind is silenced and the inner mind is made to work. ~ B.K.S. Iyengar

Pain - physical, emotional and spiritual pain - is more than just a condition that needs to be silenced, numbed or "fixed." Pain in all its forms is also a message, a kind of distress signal to our hearts and minds. There are times when it's really important to tune into that message and just listen to it. When we don't listen, our understanding of the world gets more and more distorted, and we become capable of doing things we very often regret. ~ Karyn Kusama

Small, red, and upright he waited,
gripping his new bookbag tight
in one hand and touching a lucky penny inside his coat pocket with the other,
while the first snows of winter
floated down on his eyelashes and covered the branches around him and silenced
all trace of the world. ~ Anne Carson

With a changing key,
you unlock the house where
the snow of what's silenced drifts.
Just like the blood that bursts from
Your eye or mouth or ear,
so your key changes.
Changing your key changes the word
That may drift with flakes.
Just like the wind that rebuffs you,
Clenched round your word is the snow. ~ Paul Celan

This was not to say, however, that she did not long, at times, for some greater change, that she did not experience some of those exceptional moments when one thirsts for something other than what is, and when those who, through lack of energy or imagination, are unable to generate any motive power in themselves, cry out, as the clock strikes or the postman knocks, for something new, even if it is worse, some emotion, some sorrow; when the heartstrings, which contentment has silenced, like a harp laid by, yearn to be plucked and sounded again by some hand, however rough, even if it should break them; when the will, which has with such difficulty won the right to indulge without let or hindrance in its own desires and woes, would gladly fling the reins into the hands of imperious circumstance, however cruel. ~ Marcel Proust

That high pitch scream emitted by Rose made me wince! Her ear bursting howls would stun me into silence as much as it silenced the eldest child in their home, eight-year-old Anna-Marie. ~ Stephen Richards

Fear has silenced the voice of truth in your world, and this is the anguish with which you struggle. ~ Pat Rodegast

You do understand, Sara. More than you know. More than I wish you did." His mouth closes down over mine, hot with demand, and I know he believes this conversation is over, that he means to end it with the wicked caress of his tongue against mine, the possessive splay of his hands on my body. But I refuse to be this powerless, to be silenced with the very passion that drives me to need to understand this man. "No," I gasp, and shove against him, breathless as I meet his gaze and demand, "Make me understand, Chris." And on some level I know this is that unknown place I've craved to go with him, that place he hides from me, that place he wants to take me. This is where we have to go, where we've always been headed. ~ Lisa Renee Jones

Genius resembles a bell; in order to ring it must be suspended into pure air, and when a foreign body touches it, its joyful toneis silenced. ~ Franz Grillparzer

And now he learned how men can consider other men as beasts and that the easiest way to get along with such men was to be a beast. A clean face, an open face, an eye raised to meet an eye - these drew attention and attention drawn brought punishment. Adam thought how a man doing an ugly or a brutal thing has hurt himself and must punish someone for the hurt. To be guarded at work by men with shotguns, to be shackled by the ankle at night to a chain, were simple matters of precaution, but the savage whippings for the least stir of will, for the smallest shred of dignity or resistance, these seemed to indicate that guards were afraid of prisoners, and Adam knew from his years in the army that a man afraid is a dangerous animal. And Adam, like anyone in the world, feared what whipping would do to his body and his spirit. He drew a curtain around himself. He removed expression from his face, light from his eyes, and silenced his speech. Later he was not so much astonished that it had happened to him but that he had been able to take it and with a minimum of pain. It was much more horrible afterward than when it was happening. It is a triumph of self-control to see a man whipped until the muscles of his back show white and glistening through the cuts and to give no sign of pity or anger or interest. And Adam learned this. ~ John Steinbeck

My geological examination of the country generally created a good deal of surprise amongst the Chilenos: it was long before they could be convinced that I was not hunting for mines. This was sometimes troublesome: I found the most ready way of explaining my employment, was to ask them how it was that they themselves were not curious concerning earthquakes and volcanos? – why some springs were hot and others cold? – why there were mountains in Chile, and not a hill in La Plata? These bare questions at once satisfied and silenced the greater number; some, however (like a few in England who are a century behind hand), thought that all such inquiries were useless and impious; and that it was quite sufficient that God had thus made the mountains. ~ Charles Darwin

I go about things in an oblique way. It's like a sidelong glance. This doesn't mean I don't like the sharp stab of directness - only that what I like more are all the moments, leading up to that moment of directness or that expression of rage . . . how long rage was silenced before it exploded and at what cost. ~ Lê Thi Diem Thúy

That wind. I see it's blowing now. Furtive but commanding, it has dictated every move we've ever made. My mother felt it, and so do I - even here, even now - as it sweeps us like leaves into his backseat corner, dancing us to shreds against the stones. V'la l'bon vent, v'a l'joli vent. I though we'd silenced it for good. But the smallest thing can wake the wind@ a word, a sign, even a death. There's no such thing as a trivial thing. Everything costs; it all adds up until finally the balance shifts and we're gone again, back on the road, telling ourselves - well maybe next time ~ Joanne Harris

Art has no obligation to evolve but it has a powerful incentive to do so. Art that is static, that captures a dead moment, is nothing. It is, at best, nostalgia; at worst, it can be a blight on our sense of who we are, a shame we pack away. Artists who refuse to listen, participate, and change along with the world around them are not being silenced or punished by censorious college sophomores, they are letting obsolescence devour them voluntarily. Political correctness is just the inexorable turn of the gear. Falling behind is preventable. ~ Lindy West

At once they were absolutely silenced, for money talks in an eloquent voice. Deliberately ~ Max Brand

Saw him as a saint. His attitude silenced me. From that moment on, if he had been brought back to me dead on a stretcher, I would not have cared. He cannot hurt me any more. ~ Anais Nin

Life is still life, whatever its pangs; our eyes and ears and their use remain with us, though the prospect of what pleases be wholly withdrawn, and the sound of what consoles must be silenced. ~ Charlotte Bronte

Essay on Adam There are five possibilities. One: Adam fell. Two: he was pushed. Three: he jumped. Four: he only looked over the edge, and one look silenced him. Five: nothing worth mentioning happened to Adam. The first, that he fell, is too simple. The fourth, fear, we have tried and found useless. The fifth, nothing happened, is dull. The choice is between: he jumped or was pushed. And the difference between these is only an issue of whether the demons work from the inside out or from the outside in: the one theological question. ~ Robert Bringhurst

I want to love you wildly. I don't want words, but inarticulate cries, meaningless, from the bottom of my most primitive being, that flow from my belly like honey. A piercing joy, that leaves me empty, conquered, silenced. ~ Anais Nin

I don't mind expressing my opinions and speaking out against injustice. I would be doing this even if I wasn't a writer. I grew up in a household that believed in social justice. I have always understood myself as having an obligation to stand on the side of the silenced, the oppressed, and the mistreated. ~ Tayari Jones

Be isolated, be ignored, be attacked, be in doubt, be frightened, but do not be silenced. ~ Bertrand Russell

To all the girls who have faced injustice and silenced.
Together we will be heard. ~ Malala Yousafzai

There are many things that make this book fiction, but the roles women play within it are not. The women of the eighteenth century were met with opposition. They had to fight endlessly. Their work was silenced, their contributions ignored, and many of their stories are forgotten today.
Nevertheless, they persisted. ~ Mackenzi Lee

Women are silenced by both the invisibility and the acceptability of the problem. ~ Laura Bates

But, above all, it will confer an inestimable benefit on morality and religion, by showing that all the objections urged against them may be silenced for ever by the Socratic method, that is to say, by proving the ignorance of the objector. ~ Immanuel Kant

Whatever is silenced will clamor to be heard, though silently. A ~ Margaret Atwood

John dear!" said I in the gentlest voice, "the key is down by the front steps, under a plantain leaf!"
That silenced him for a few moments.
Then he said - very quietly indeed, "Open the door, my darling!"
"I can't," said I. "The key is down by the front door under a plantain leaf!"
And then I said it again, several times, very gently and slowly, and said it so often that he had to go and see, and he got it of course, and came in. ~ Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The thirst for something other than what we have ... to bring something new, even if it is worse, some emotion, some sorrow; when our sensibility, which happiness has silenced like an idle harp, wants to resonate under some hand, even a rough one, and even if it might be broken by it. ~ Marcel Proust

Nick tugged her head back, his tormented gaze raking over her face. His trembling fingertips traced the line of her cheek and jaw. "My God. Lottie…" As his panicked exploration continued, he discovered the bruises on her throat, and he uttered a cry of fury. "Holy hell! Your neck. He dared to… I'm going to slaughter that bastard - "
Lottie placed her fingers over his mouth. "I'm all right," she said gently. Feeling the way his large body shook, she drew her hand over his chest in a calming stroke. After the traumatic events of the past hours, it was so wonderful to be with him that her lips curved in a wobbly smile. She gazed into his dusty, sweat-streaked face with concern. "In fact, I believe I may be in better condition than you, my darling."
A primitive groan came from his throat, and he clutched her with his right arm, bending over her hungrily. "I love you," he said in a low, shaken voice. "I love you so much, Lottie." His lips covered hers in a fiercely ardent kiss.
Clearly he was too unsettled to recall that there were others in the room. Lottie turned her face away with a muffled laugh. "I love you, too," she whispered. "Not here, darling. Later, with more privacy, we can - " She was silenced as Nick seized her mouth once more. Suddenly she found herself pushed up against the wall by six feet of aroused, overwrought male. Realizing that there was no hope of subduing him, Lottie stroked his broad back in an effort to soothe him. He possessed her with ~ Lisa Kleypas

No, I'm serious," Frankie insisted, fed up with being silenced. "Why didn't you just make me a normie?"
Viktor sighed. "Because that's not who we are. We're special. And I'm very proud that. You should be, too."
"Proud?" Frankie spat out the word as if it had been soaked in nail polish remover. "How can I be proud when everyone is telling me to hide?"
"I'm telling you to hide so you'll be safe. But you can still feel proud of who you are," he explained, like it really was that simple. "Pride has to come from within you and stay with you, no matter what people say."
Huh?
Frankie crossed her arms and looked away. ~ Lisi Harrison

Never yet were the feelings and instincts of our nature violated with impunity; never yet was the voice of conscience silenced without retribution. ~ Anna Brownell Jameson

The taboos that I have mentioned are extraordinarily harsh and numerous. They stand around nearly every subject that is genuinely important to man: they hedge in free opinion and experimentation on all sides. Consider, for example, the matter of religion. It is debated freely and furiously in almost every country in the world save the United States, but here the critic is silenced. The result is that all religions are equally safeguarded against criticism, and that all of them lose vitality. We protect the status quo, and so make steady war upon revision and improvement. ~ H.L. Mencken

this consciousness I'm describing is gendered (and I think it is), it is clearly feminine. The single most damaging and distorting thing that religion has done to faith involves overlooking, undervaluing, and even outright suppressing this interior, ulterior kind of consciousness. So much Western theology has been constructed on a fundamental disfigurement of the mind and reality. In neglecting the voices of women, who are more attuned to the immanent nature of divinity, who feel that eruption in their very bodies, theology has silenced a powerful - perhaps the most powerful - side of God. ~ Christian Wiman

My voice is not going to be silenced by anybody. ~ Roland Martin

The dead are silenced and the living are speechless.Who's going to tell their stories if I don't? ~ Gillian Rubinstein

The real individuals of our time are the martyrs who have gone through infernos of suffering and degradation in their resistance to conquest and oppression, not the inflated personalities of popular culture, the conventional dignitaries. These unsung heroes consciously exposed their existence as individuals to the terroristic annihilation that others undergo unconsciously through the social process. The anonymous martyrs of the concentration camps are the symbols of the humanity that is striving to be born. The task of philosophy is to translate what they have done into language that will be heard, even though their finite voices have been silenced by tyranny. ~ Max Horkheimer

We need to stand together with all of the victims [ of sexual harassment] and make sure they are not silenced. ~ Gretchen Carlson

Women's studies is a comfy, chummy morass of unchallenged groupthink . It is, with rare exception, totally unscholarly. Academic feminists have silenced men and dissenting women. ~ Camille Paglia

The voices of peace can't be silenced by bombs, shootings, sieges, brutality and barbarism. Despite the challenges we face as peace-makers in a troubled region, all we want is peace and our campaign #WeWantPeace continues. ~ Widad Akreyi

When he reached the doorman, he stopped.
"Did you see Miss Christian come in a few minutes ago?"
The doorman nodded. "Yes, sir. She got here just before you arrived."
Relief staggered him. He bolted for the elevator. A few moments later, he strode into the apartment.
"Kelly? Kelly, honey, where are you?"
Not waiting for an answer, he hurried into the bedroom to see her sitting on the edge of the bed, her face pale and drawn in pain. When she heard him, she looked up and he winced at the dullness in her eyes.
She'd been crying.
"I thought I could do it," she said in a raw voice, before he could beg her forgiveness. "I thought I could just go on and forget and that I could accept others thinking the worst of me as long as you and I were okay again. I did myself a huge disservice."
"Kelly…"
Something in her look silenced him and he stood several feet away, a feeling of helplessness gripping him as he watched her try to compose herself.
"I sat there tonight while your friends and your mother looked at me in disgust, while they looked at you with a mixture of pity and disbelief in their eyes. All because you took me back. The tramp who betrayed you in the worst possible manner. And I thought to myself I don't deserve this. I've never deserved it. I deserve better."
She raised her eyes to his and he flinched at the horrible pain he saw reflected there. Then she laughed. A raw, terrible sound that grated across his ears.
"A ~ Maya Banks

But what if ... what if you sincerely believed something was true, but you were dead wrong? What if you were so stubbornly sure that you were right, that you wouldn't even consider the truth? Would the truth be silenced, or would it try to break through? ~ Stephenie Meyer

Staff silenced her with a hot kiss. "Hush," he whispered, taking her closer into his arms. "Mary, we have waited long enough. I want you, dearest, to make up for the lonely hours, and countless advice, and worry that your kings and cursed father would totally ruin our life together. And for the wasted years. Tonight, Mary, we are going to begin catching up-and it will take a long, long time for us to be even ... ~ Karen Harper

Sometimes the voices of the past refuse to be silenced. Then all one can do is sit and listen.

-Lex - Shiv Crew, Book One ~ Laken Cane

I look forward to the day when women with leadership and insight, gifts and talents, callings and prophetic leanings are called out and celebrated as Deborah, instead of silenced as Jezebel. ~ Sarah Bessey

A night of crying has silenced me. This morning it seems the whole world is against me. I've never before felt so barren, so empty. I've never before thought the daylight to be ... my enemy. My enemy. ~ Shaun Hick

I'm not your dear girl, Kasia said, with a bite in her tone that silenced him. ~ Naomi Novik

Further evidence for the pathogenic role of dissociation has come from a largescale clinical and community study of traumatized people conducted by a task force of the American Psychiatric Association. In this study, people who reported having dissociative symptoms were also quite likely to develop persistent somatic symptoms for which no physical cause could be found. They also frequently engaged in self-destructive attacks on their own bodies. The results of these investigations validate the century-old insight that traumatized people relive in their bodies the moments of terror that they can not describe in words. Dissociation appears to be the mechanism by which intense sensory and emotional experiences are disconnected from the social domain of language and memory, the internal mechanism by which terrorized people are silenced. ~ Judith Lewis Herman

Genuine bravery for a writer ... It is about calmly speaking the truth when everyone else is silenced, when the truth cannot be expressed. It is about speaking out with a different voice, risking the wrath of the state and offending everyone, for the sake of the truth, and the writer's conscience. ~ Murong Xuecun

It is encrusted with history. Embedded within it are peculiar fragments of DNA-some derived from ancient viruses-that were inserted into the genome in the distant past and have been carried passively for millennia since then. Some of these fragments were once capable of actively "jumping" between genes and organisms, but they have now been largely inactivated and silenced. Like decommissioned traveling salesmen, these pieces are permanently tethered to our genome, unable to move or get out. These fragments are vastly more common than genes, resulting in yet another major idiosyncrasy of our genome: much of the human genome is not particularly human. ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee

Will his work survive? Alas, I worry that it will not. As an American liberal with impeccable credentials, I would like to say that political correctness is going to kill American liberalism if it is not fought to the death by people like me for the dangers it represents to free speech, to the exchange of ideas, to openheartedness, or to the spirit of art itself. Political correctness has a stranglehold on academia, on feminism, and on the media. It is a form of both madness and maggotry, and has already silenced the voices of writers like James Dicky across the land. ~ Pat Conroy

Concerted voices of heartfelt petitions in Arabic all pleading for divine intervention are abruptly silenced as the drone ensures fatalities by injecting a final stab in each of their skulls. ~ C.J. Anderson

Dusk"

The shadow covers the outer petals
The wind makes off with the final gestures of leaves
The foreign, now twice-silenced sea
inside a summer pitied for its lights

A longing from here
A memory from there ~ Alejandra Pizarnik

Opera has the power to warn you that you have wasted your life. You haven't acted on your desires. You've suffered a stunted, vicarious existence. You've silenced your passions. The volume, height, depth, lushness, and excess of operatic utterance reveal, by contrast, how small your gestures have been until now, how impoverished your physicality; you have only used a fraction of your bodily endowment, and your throat is closed. ~ Terry Tempest Williams

Our nation sought to rehabilitate and affirm the dignity and personhood of those who for so long had been silenced, had been turned into anonymous, marginalized ones. Now they would be able to tell their stories, they would remember, and in remembering would be acknowledged to be persons with an inalienable personhood. Our country's negotiators rejected the two extremes and opted for a "third way," a compromise between the extreme of Nuremberg trials and blanket amnesty or national amnesia. And that third way was granting amnesty to individuals in exchange for a full disclosure relating to the crime for which amnesty was being sought. It was the carrot of possible freedom in exchange for truth and the stick was, for those already in jail, the prospect of lengthy prison sentences and, for those still free, the probability of arrest and prosecution and imprisonment. The option South Africa chose raises ~ Desmond Tutu

We are all guilty. And therefore we will all vote, as a reminder that every voice counts, and when you choose not to use your voice, you are letting yourself be silenced. ~ Cassandra Clare

There is no point of relaying statistics on rape because for every figure given there are thousands missing, unreported. It is a shameful state we have created where a victim chooses to endure the pain and suffering, silenced by fear that judgment will come before justice. ~ Aysha Taryam

Because he had hardened his soul and silenced his conscience with the excuse of progress ~ Isabel Allende

A sickening howl stopped her, sucking the air out of her lungs.
The night's chatter silenced, even the loitering city rats pausing to listen.
Scarlet had heard wild wolves before, prowling the countryside in search of easy prey on the farms.
But never had a wolf's howl send a chill down her spine like that. ~ Marissa Meyer

It is my responsibility to make sure that the fear is overcome ... This attack must instead free our speech about Islamic fundamentalism. We must not be silenced. ~ Marine Le Pen

CELIA: For since the little wit that fools have was silenced, the little foolery that wise men have makes great a show. ~ William Shakespeare

Sometimes there are more tears than laughter, and sometimes there is more laughter than tears, and sometimes you feel so choked you can neither weep nor laugh. For tears and laughter there will always be so long as there is human life. When our tear wells have run dry and the voice of laughter is silenced, the world will be truly dead. ~ Lin Yutang

In the last analysis, human security means a child who did not die, a disease that did not spread, an ethnic tension that did not explode, a dissident who was not silenced, a human spirit that was not crushed. ~ Mahbub Ul Haq

Thought that is silenced is always rebellious. Majorities, of course, are often mistaken. This is why the silencing of minorities is necessarily dangerous. Criticism and dissent are the indispensable antidote to major delusions. ~ Alan Barth

The dead are mute, but the living still have voice with which to protest their innocence. Often their objections are noisy and pious, impossible to refute since the person who could condemn them has been silenced forever. ~ Sue Grafton

The left is entering a new phase of ideological agitation no longer trying to win the debate but stopping debate altogether, banishing from public discourse any and all opposition. The proper word for that attitude is totalitarian. It declares certain controversies over and visits serious consequences from social ostracism to vocational defenestration upon those who refuse to be silenced. ~ Charles Krauthammer

He said, "Miss Tiffany, the witch ... would you be so good as to tell me: what is the sound of love?"
Tiffany looked at his face. The noise from the tug-of-war was silenced. The birds stopped singing. In the grass, the grasshoppers stopped rubbing their legs together and looked up. The earth moved slightly as even the chalk giant (perhaps) strained to hear, and the silence flowed over the world until all there was was Preston, who was always there.
And Tiffany said, "Listen. ~ Terry Pratchett