Quotes & Sayings About Silence And Distance

There are few things sadder in this life than watching someone walk away after they've left you. Watching the distance between your bodies expand until there's nothing but empty space and silence. — Laura Zigman

Meanwhile, the travellers pursued their journey; Emily making frequent efforts to appear cheerful, and too often relapsing into silence and dejection. Madame Cheron, attributing her melancholy solely to the circumstance of her being removed to a distance from her lover, and believing, that the sorrow, which her niece still expressed for the loss of St. Aubert, proceeded partly from an affectation of sensibility, endeavoured to make it appear ridiculous to her, that such deep regret should continue to be felt so long after the period usually allowed for grief. At — Eliza Parsons

Why? What is his intention? Have you at least discovered that?" "The same as ours, we think," Felixson said. "The getting and keeping of power. He hasn't just taken our treaties, scrolls, and grimoires. He's cleared out all the vestments, all the talismans, all the amulets - " "Hush," Ragowski said suddenly. "Listen." There was a silence among them for a moment, and then a funereal bell chimed softly in the distance. "Oh Christ," Lili said. "It's his bell." The dead man laughed. "He's found you. — Clive Barker

Read poems to yourself in the middle of the night. Turn on a single lamp and read them while you're alone in an otherwise dark room or while someone else sleeps next to you. Read them when you're wide awake in the early morning, fully alert. Say them over to yourself in a place where silence reigns and the din of the culture - the constant buzzing noise that surrounds us - has momentarily stopped. These poems have come from a great distance to find you. — Edward Hirsch

We phone each other because it's only in these long-distance calls, this groping for each other along cables of buried copper, cluttered relays, the whirling contact points of clogged selector switches, only in this probing the silence and waiting for an echo that one prolongs that first call from afar, that cry that went up when the first great crack of the continental drift yawned beneath the feet of a human couple, when the depths of the ocean opened up to separate them, while, torn precipitously apart, one on one bank and one on the other, the couple strove with their cries to stretch out a bridge of sound that might keep them together yet, cries that grew ever fainter until the roar of the waves overwhelmed all hope. — Italo Calvino

On days when it was too hot, they did not leave their room. The dazzling brilliance from outside plastered bars of light between the slats of the blinds. Not a sound in the village. Down below, on the sidewalk, no one. This spreading silence increased the tranquility of things. In the distance, the caulkers' hammers tamped the hulls, and a heavy breeze brought the smell of tar. — Gustave Flaubert

People have become afraid of love because in love also, death penetrates. If two lovers are sitting side by side in deep love and intimacy, not even talking ... Talking is an escape, an escape from love. When two lovers are talking that simply shows they are avoiding the intimacy. Words in-between give distance - with no words distance disappears, death appears. In silence there is death just lurking around - a beautiful phenomenon. But people are so afraid that they go on talking whether it is needed or not. They go on talking about anything, everything - but they cannot keep silent. — Rajneesh

Today there is a pleasant very light haze over the whole sky, and the sea has a misleadingly docile silvered look, as if the substantial wavelets were determined to stroke the rocks as hard as they could without showing any trace of foam. It is a compact radiant complacent sort of sea, very beautiful. There ought to be seals, the waves themselves are almost seals today, but still I scan the water in vain with my long-distance glasses. Enormous yellow-beaked gulls perch on the rocks and stare at me with brilliant glass eyes. A shadow-cormorant skims the glycerine sea. The rocks are thronged with butterflies. The temperature remains high. I wash my clothes and dry them on the lawn. I have been swimming every day
and feel very fit and salty. Still no move from Lizzie, but I am not worried. I feel happy in my silence. If the gods have some treat in store for Lizzie and me, good. If not, also good. I feel innocent and free. Perhaps it is all that swimming. — Iris Murdoch

As I wandered around the room, with Sachiko by my side, I began to think how much we need space in those we love, space enough to accommodate growth and possibility. Knowledge must leave room for mystery; intimacy, taken too far, was the death of imagination. Keeping some little distance from her was, I thought, a way of keeping an open space, a silence for the imagination to fill.
"At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things," Thoreau had written, "we require that all things be mysterious and unexplainable. — Pico Iyer

A few moments of silence may be all the meditation we need at times. Our homes could have a little space for withdrawal and quiet, and even a small garden could offer some distance from noise. — Thomas Moore

Holmes," I asked as we stepped into the street, "I realise the question sounds sophomoric, but do you find that there are aspects of yourself with which you feel most comfortable? I only ask out of curiosity; you needn't feel obliged to answer." He offered me his arm and, formally, I took it. "'Who am I?' you mean." He smiled at the question and gave what was at first glance a most oblique answer. "Do you know what a fugue is?" "Are you changing the subject?" "No." I thought in silence for some distance before his answer arranged itself sensibly in my mind. "I see. Two discrete sections of a fugue may not appear related, unless the listener has received the entire work, at which time the music's internal logic makes clear the relationship. — Laurie R. King

From a short distance, the few attending mourners under the blue tarp looked on silently as each ritualistic movement necessary to properly complete the last rites of the dead were respectively adhered to. Not surprisingly, only the constant raindrops marred the utter silence of the occasion, and
not a single teardrop fell. Not a whimper or a shudder. Not for this man. Not today. Not ever again. It took all Skye had not to walk over to the hole, lift up her skirt, and piss on the man who had repeatedly raped her as a child. Good riddance, you nasty bastard. Now you are in God's hands. Have fun with that, you piece of garbage. — Sahar Abdulaziz

Let your thoughts run free, as if your mind is taking a leisurely Sunday afternoon walk through a garden in spring bloom.
I stand in the hallway, mute. Alone. I realize: I must develop the ability to go the distance rather than just envy it.
Don't speak unless you can improve on silence
The truth is never as interesting as what people whisper about them
It's because the dream is so perfect that I can walk away from it
That blackness brought me out of the nightmare and into this morning's light — Rachel Cohn

Ranger picked up and there was a moment of silence as if he was sensing me at the other end, taking my body temperature and heart rate long distance. "Babe," he finally said.
"Do you know the slum apartment building Bobby Sunflower owns on Stark?"
"Yes. It's on the same block as his funeral home."
"That's the one. I'm going in to look for someone. If you don't hear from me in a half hour maybe you could send someone to check."
"Is this a smart thing to do?"
"Probably not."
"As long as you know," Ranger said. And he disconnected. — Janet Evanovich

Silence has many dimensions. It can be a regression and an escape, a loss of self, or it can be presence, awareness, unification, self-discovery. Negative silence blurs and confuses our identity, and we lapse into daydreams or diffuse anxieties. Positive silence pulls us together and makes us realize who we are, who we might be, and the distance between these two. — Thomas Merton

I once spent an entire night in a hotel in New York looking across the way into someone's apartment where nothing was happening but daily life, a phone call, television watching, staring into the fridge. Seeing how those strangers lived over that small distance and in absolute silence moved me deeply. — Lauren Groff

I can't say a thing. What is there to say? I have given birth to a son! What more can I possibly hope for? I hear his footsteps crossing the front yard and gradually fading away, off into the distance. As the silence grows, I suddenly realize that hes gone. He's gone to someplace far away, and he's never coming back.(2007: 153) — Hwang Sok-yong

I came to recognize the landscape of my life in the lives of many women. Their stories and the places they spoke of spanned a world beyond my experience, from mill towns to suburbs, from logging camps to ethnic neighborhoods, from inner cities to Indian reservations. Few shared my place of origin or the events of my life, but many, it seems, shared my experience. Listening to their stories, I came to understand how women can be isolated by circumstances as well as by distance, and how our experiences, though geographically distinct, often translated into the same feelings. Away from the physical presence of my past, I found it easy to argue that what mattered most was the story, the truth of what we tell ourselves, the versions we pass along to our daughters. But as I stood in the living room of my rock house that afternoon, I was again reminded of the enormous power of this prairie, its silence and the whisper I made inside it. I had forgotten how easily one person can be lost here. — Judy Blunt

Cultivate the distance. Nurture the silence. Let it grow until your fragile heart is as far and inaccessible as his marbled emotions. Don't talk. Don't move. Sit still. If he shows up, lie. Believe your own excuses.

And if he tries to charm his way back in, punch him in the face. — Danabelle Gutierrez

I would ask myself what o'clock it could be; I could hear the whistling of trains, which, now nearer and now farther off, punctuating the distance like the note of a bird in a forest, shewed me in perspective the deserted countryside through which a traveller would be hurrying towards the nearest station: the path that he followed being fixed for ever in his memory by the general excitement due to being in a strange place, to doing unusual things, to the last words of conversation, to farewells exchanged beneath an unfamiliar lamp which echoed still in his ears amid the silence of the night; and to the delightful prospect of being once again at home. — Marcel Proust

Behind us lay the great Antarctic Land; snow peaks rising beyond one another until by distance they dwindled away into insignificancy. The silence and immobility of the scene was impressive; not the slightest animation or vitality anywhere. It was like a mental image of our globe in its primitive state - a spectacle of Chaos. Around is ice and snow and the remnants of internal fires; above, a sinister sky; below the sombre sea; and over all, the silence of the sepulchre! — Louis Bernacchi

We found out that day, fairly quickly, how great and complex our fondness was for each other; I also had my first sense of something central about Caroline that would become a pillar of our friendship. When she was confronted with any emotional difficulty, however slight or major, her response as to approach rather than to flee. There she would stay until the matter was resolved, and the emotional aftermath was free of any hangover or recrimination. My instincts toward resolution were similar: I knew that silence and distance were far more pernicious than head-on engagement. This compatibility helped to ensure that there was no unclaimed baggage between us in the years to come. — Gail Caldwell

While the burning fish is tracing his arc
near the cypress, beneath the highest blue of all,
and the blind boy flies away in the white stone,
and the ivory poem of the green cicada
beats and reverberates in the elm,
let us give honor to the Lord
the black mark of his good hand
who has arranged for silence in all this noise.
Honor to the god of distance and of absence,
ff the anchor in the sea - the open sea ...
He frees us from the world - it's everywhere
he opens roads for us to walk on.
With our cup of darkness filled to the brim,
with our heart that always knows some hunger,
let us give honor to the Lord who created the zero
and carved our thought out of the block of faith. — Antonio Machado

You can be angry and silent, but it's no use - there's no distance in the spirit - besides, my words touch you more softly than my hands ... — John Geddes

There was only the dark infinity in which nothing was. And something happened. At the distance of a star something happened, and everything began. The Word did not come into being, but it was. It did not break upon the silence, but it was older than the silence and the silence was made of it. — N. Scott Momaday

Karrin smiled faintly and shook her head. "He always said you knew ghosts. You're sure it was really him?"
Mort eyed her. "Me and everyone else, yeah."
Karrin scowled and stared into the middle distance.
Mort frowned and then his expression softened. "You didn't want it to be his ghost. Did you?"
Murphy shook her head slowly, but said nothing.
"You needed everyone to be wrong about it. Because if it really was his ghost," Mort said, "it means that he really is dead."
Murphy's face ... just crumpled. Her eyes overflowed and she bowed her head. Her body shook in silence. — Jim Butcher

Frustration, too evident in the cement clench of his jaw.
Distance, the ethereal detached from the flesh and bone.
Impatience, in the soft thrum of his heel as we sit in silence. — Ellen Hopkins

Afraid of offending with an off word or the slightest insensitivity, I keep an unobtrusive and silent distance. Nevertheless, my pursed lips and offish stance are perceived as cold, managing to offend all. — Richelle E. Goodrich

I hate the uncultivated crowd and keep them at a distance. Favour me by your tongues (keep silence).
[Lat., Odi profanum vulgus et arceo.
Favete linguis.] — Horace

Get married, my friend, you don't know what it means to live alone, at my age. Nowadays feeling alone fills me with appalling anguish; being alone at home, by the fire, in the evening. It seems to me then that I'm alone on the earth, dreadfully alone, but surrounded by indeterminate dangers, by unknown, terrible things; and the wall, which divides me from my neighbour, whom I do not know, separates me from him by as great a distance as that which separates me from the stars I see through my window. A kind of fever comes over me, a fever of pain and fear, and the silence of the walls terrifies me. It is so profound, so sad, the silence of the room in which you live alone. It isn't just a silence of the body, but a silence of the soul, and, when a piece of furniture creaks, a shiver runs through your whole body, for in that dismal place you expect to hear no sound. — Guy De Maupassant

The 'mystical experience'. Always here and now - in that freedom which is one with distance in that stillness which is born of silence. But - this is a freedom in the midst of action, a stillness in the midst of other human beings. The mystery is a constant reality to him who, in this world, is free from self-concern, a reality that grows peaceful and mature before the receptive attention of assent. — Dag Hammarskjold

He was trying to make me his bed buddy. I declined. He gave chase."
... "How, exactly, did you 'decline' his offer?"
"By slitting his throat."
The silence in the garage was broken only by the sound of water drip-dripping somewhere in the distance. Sara just stared. So did Ransom. Then the idiot male started laughing hysterically. He laughed so hard he fell off the bike and onto the scarred concrete of the garage floor. Even that didn't stop him.
Elena would've kicked him, except he'd probably use the chance to pull her down with him. "Shut up before I do the same to you."
He tried to stop laughing. Failed. "Jesus, Ellie. You are awesome! — Nalini Singh

Your voice, through the beelike hum, was remote and anxious. It kept sliding into the distance and vanishing. I spoke to you with tightly shut eyes, and felt like crying. My love for you was the throbbing, welling warmth of tears. That is exactly how I imagined paradise: silence and tears, and the warm silk of your knees. This you could not comprehend. — Vladimir Nabokov

People say a mother is only as happy as her least happy child. But what if the state of that child's happiness has become a mystery? What if that child is no longer a child but a young man who has removed himself to a great distance and encased himself in silence? — Jan Ellison

The mystery of the evening-star brilliant in silence and distance between the downward-surging plunge of the sun and the vast, hollow seething of inpouring night. The magnificence of the watchful morning-star, that watches between the night and the day, the gleaming clue to the two opposites. — D.H. Lawrence

We're all like the little sailor. From the harbors we hear the strains of accordions and the murky soapy noises of the docks, from the mountains we receive the dish of silence that the shepherds eat, but we don't hear more than our own distances. And what distances without end and without doors and without mountains! — Federico Garcia Lorca

Then there are also the quiet deaths. How about the day you realized you weren't going to be an astronaut or the queen of Sheba? Feel the silent distance between yourself and how you felt as a child, between yourself and those feelings of wonder and splendor and trust. Feel the mature fondness for who you once were, and your current need to protect innocence wherever you make might find it. The silence that surrounds the loss of innocence is a most serious death, and yet it is necessary for the onset of maturity.

What about the day we began working not for ourselves, but rather with the hope that our kids have a better life? Or the day we realize that, on the whole, adult life is deeply repetitive? As our lives roll into the ordinary, when our ideals sputter and dissipate, as we wash the dishes after yet another meal, we are integrating death, a little part of us is dying so that another part can live. — Matthew Sanford

Living alone,' November whispered, 'is a skill, like running long distance or programming old computers. You have to know parameters, protocols. You have to learn them so well that they become like a language: to have music always so that the silence doesn't overwhelm you, to perform your work exquisitely well so that your time is filled. You have to allow yourself to open up until you are the exact size of the place you live, no more or else you get restless. No less, or else you drown. There are rules; there are ways of being and not being. — Catherynne M Valente

I'm far from the world and I see it like a brightly lit ball in the distance. The sky behind it is mostly gray. It starts in silence, but I can see the people. Everyone is in a hurry. They're racing around the globe. They each hold a thread, like a bit of string, and it unravels, covering the planet. The buzzing starts. The buzzing gets faster and louder. They're all racing to one spot on the earth. I'm outside of it and I can see everything. I can see every person in the world racing to a single spot on the earth. The buzzing is all I can hear. It gets so I can't take it. Then I wake up. — Erica Lorraine Scheidt

I would like to address the peoples of the world, especially the Arab peoples and the US people. Their silence over the violations against the oppressed Iraqi people who suffered greatly cannot be accepted by any fair-minded and zealous person. Therefore, all must take these violations seriously and express themselves even through peaceful demonstrations, sit-ins and protests. I urge those people to distance themselves from their rulers who support the West and the occupation forces. — Muqtada Al Sadr

Loneliness clarifies. Here silence stands
Like heat. Here leaves unnoticed thicken,
Hidden weeds flower, neglected waters quicken,
Luminously-peopled air ascends;
And past the poppies bluish neutral distance
Ends the land suddenly beyond a beach
Of shapes and shingle. Here is unfenced existence:
Facing the sun, untalkative, out of reach. — Philip Larkin

True friendship resists time, distance and silence. — Isabel Allende

Touch had always saved them in the past. No matter the anger or hurt, no matter the depth of the aloneness, a touch, even a light and passing touch, reminded them of their long togetherness. A palm on a neck: it all flooded back. A head leaned upon a shoulder: the chemicals surged, the memory of love. At times, it was almost impossible to cross the distance between their bodies, to reach out. At times, it was impossible. Each new the feeling so well, in the silence of a darkened bedroom, looking at the same ceiling: If I could open my fingers, my heart's fingers could open. — Jonathan Safran Foer

Always keep a good distance between yourself and lying, quarreling, detracting, insulting and gossip. The person who can do that will some day learn to enjoy the silence. — Thomas A Kempis

In the various arts, and above all in that of writing, the shortest distance between two points, even if close to each other, has never been and never will be, nor is it now, what is known as a straight line, never, never, to put it strongly and emphatically in response to any doubts, to silence them once and for all. — Jose Saramago

Rose appeared to be in a sort of dream. As Eilis watched her, it struck her that she had never seen Rose look so beautiful. And then it occurred to her that she was already feeling that she would need to remember this room, her sister, this scene, as though from a distance. In the silence that had lingered, she realized, it had somehow been tacitly arranged that Eilis would go to America. Father Flood, she believed, had been invited to the house because Rose knew that he could arrange it. Her — Colm Toibin

There are for starters, grandeur and silence, pure water and clean air. There is also the gift of distance ... the chance to stand away from relationships and daily ritual ... and the gift of energy. Wilderness infuses us with its own special brand of energy. — Linn Thomas

And it all came to pass, all that she had hoped, but it did not fill her with rapture nor carry her away with the power or the fervor she had expected. She had imagined it all different, and had imagined herself different, too. In dreams and poems everything had been, as it were, beyond the sea; the haze of distance had mysteriously veiled all the restless mass of details and had thrown out the large lines in bold relief, while the silence of distance had lent its spirit of enchantment. It had been easy then to feel the beauty; but now that she was in the midst of it all, when every little feature stood out and spoke boldly with the manifold voices of reality, and beauty was shattered as light in a prism, she could not gather the rays together again, could not put the picture back beyond the sea. Despondently she was obliged to admit to herself that she felt poor, surrounded by riches that she could not make her own. — Jens Peter Jacobsen

Once more I am the silent one who came out of the distance wrapped in cold rain and bells: I owe to earth's pure death the will to sprout. — Pablo Neruda

There is silence, and then there is rural silence, silence you could feel and reach out and touch, silence with texture and distance. — Harlan Coben

The doctor from the mainland came and went. Silence settled over the island again, like a displaced curtain falling back in thickened, heavier folds. For there was a different quality in the silence now. It had tasted something, rich food on which it had long been thinly rationed. Shadowy things were trooping up, called by that scent of blood, like flies that smell carrion. They were not strangers to the old house; they had been ill-fed and at a distance, now they were hungry and avid and near. — Evangeline Walton

If you love somebody, tell them. If there is conflict, let it go and fight instead for peace. Break the numb false silence and break the distance too. Laugh and cry and apologize and start again. This life is short and fragile but friendship is among the greatest miracles. — Jamie Tworkowski

A young woman stepped forward from the throng and asked, "0' great prophet, tell us how we might find love that is unconditional, unwavering and unending." The prophet did not answer right away. He looked off into the distance, gathering his thoughts. Silence descended upon the crowd. Then he turned his gaze upon the young woman and said, "Get a dog. — Kahlil Gibran

We're all torn between the desire for privacy and the fear of lonliness. We need each other and we need to get away from each other. We need proximity and distance, conversation and silence. We almost always get more of each than we want at any one time. — Andy Rooney

I hadn't known Chancel very well, but ten days earlier I had seen him laughing with the others around the Christmas tree. Maybe Robert was right; the distance between the living and the dead really isn't very great. And yet, like myself, those future corpses who were drinking their coffee in silence appeared ashamed to be so alive. — Simone De Beauvoir

I work out of silence, because silence makes up for my actual lack of working space. Silence substitutes for actual space, for psychological distance, for a sense of privacy and intactness. In this sense silence is absolutely necessary. — Radka Donnell