Understand My Silence Quotes & Sayings

If you don,t understand my silence . How you will understand my words. — MINE

I have often remarked in the United States that it is not easy to make a man understand that his presence may be dispensed with; hints will not always suffice to shake him off. I contradict an American at every word he says, to show him that his conversation bores me; he instantly labors with fresh pertinacity to convince me; I preserve a dogged silence, and he thinks I am meditating deeply on the truths which he is uttering; at last I rush from his company, and he supposes that some urgent business hurries me elsewhere. This man will never understand that he wearies me to extinction unless I tell him so: and the only way to get rid of him is to make him my enemy for life. — Alexis De Tocqueville

She hesitated. "I'm not sure I understand."
"Don't you?" he asked. "You changed my heart, Rachel."
She felt her throat constrict, making any reply impossible.
"Rachel?" Her silence rarely made him uncomfortable, but this time he had no clear view of her features and no way to gauge her reaction. He wondered if he should have made a more straightforward declaration. "Did you hear me say I love you?"
She turned her cheek into his shoulder. "I heard you. — Jo Goodman

Do you love me?"
There was an awkward silence for a moment. Then Father gave a little chuckle. "Jonas. You, of all people. Precision of language, please!"
"What do you mean?" Jonas asked. Amusement was not at all what he had anticipated.
"Your father means that you used a very generalized word, so meaningless that it's become almost obsolete," his mother explained carefully.
Jonas stared at them. Meaningless? He had never before felt anything as meaningful as the memory.
"And of course our community can't function smoothly if people don't use precise language. You could ask, 'Do you enjoy me?' The answer is 'Yes,'" his mother said.
"Or," his father suggested, "'Do you take pride in my accomplishments?' And the answer is wholeheartedly 'Yes.'"
"Do you understand why it's inappropriate to use a word like 'love'?" Mother asked.
Jonas nodded. "Yes, thank you, I do," he replied slowly.
It was his first lie to his parents. — Lois Lowry

Unlike his brothers, he sucked at flirting. Was it any wonder he preferred to spend his time in front of a computer screen? "I wondered if you'd run," she said, breaking the silence. "I thought about it." "Why didn't you?" He shrugged. "I don't understand what you want me for, but that doesn't mean I'm going to take the cowardly route and bolt before I find out." "You know enough by now that if you want me to walk away, I will. No one, not even the shifter council, can force you to lend a helping hand." "Walk away?" He snorted. "Have you met my family? I'd never live it down. Beside, I'm curious." "And yet you're not a cat. — Eve Langlais

There is a frontier-line in human closeness
That love and passion cannot violate
Though in silence mouth to mouth be soldered
And passionate devotion cleave the heart.
Here friendship, too, is powerless, and years
Of that sublime and fiery happiness
When the free soul has broken clear
From the slow languor of voluptuousness.
Those striving towards it are demented, and
If the line seem close enough to broach
Stricken with sadness ... Now you understand
Why my heart does not beat beneath your touch. — Anna Akhmatova

This will sound peculiar, I know. But this love I have for dragons, my compulsion to understand them ... I have thought of it before as though there were a dragon within me. A part of my spirit. I do not believe it is true in any mystical sense, of course; I am as human as you are. But in the metaphorical sense, yes. 'Dragon-spirited' is a good a term for me as any."
He listened to this in silence, his expression settled into the grave lines it assumed when he was deep in thought. "Do you believe you are neither male nor female?"
I almost gave a malapert answer, but caught myself in time. We had an established habit of intellectual debate, and I valued it; I would not discard it now.
"So long as my society refuses to admit of a concept of femininity that allows for such things," I said, "then one could indeed say that I stand in between. — Marie Brennan

Your darkness is a symphony

Played in explosions of silence to a crowd that has fallen in love with noise

If they refuse to applaud you
It isn't because your music isn't beautiful
It is because they have no idea how to love what they don't understand
And that, my darling, is the most horrific flaw in this mixed up world — Christopher Poindexter

Freedom, sir," I began unceremoniously, without greeting or inquiry, "freedom is the biggest thing for man. Nothing can be compared to it - nothing at all!" Surprised at my outburst, my master looked up at me in silence. "One can understand nothing from books," I went on. "We read in the scriptures that our desires are bonds, fettering us as well as others. But such words, by themselves, are so empty. It is only when we get to the point of letting the bird out of its cage that we can realize how free the bird has set us. Whatever we cage, shackles us with desire whose bonds are stronger than those of iron chains. I tell you, sir, this is just what the world has failed to understand. They all seek to reform something outside themselves. But reform is wanted only in one's own desires, nowhere else, nowhere else! — Rabindranath Tagore

At a family occasion in the 1990s, I met a relative by marriage who had spent time in Auschwitz. Within seconds of meeting me he clenched my wrist and recounted this story. A group of men had been eating in silence when one of them slumped over dead. The others fell on his body, still covered in diarrhea, and pried a piece of bread from his fingers. As they divided it, a fierce argument broke out when some of the men felt their share was an imperceptible crumb smaller than the others'. To tell a story of such degradation requires extraordinary courage, backed by a confidence that the hearer will understand it as an accounting of the circumstances and not of the men's characters. — Steven Pinker

Victoria stared at her sister with a beaming smile. She was struck as always by the sense that Vivien was at once familiar and exotic. How was it possible to love someone and yet never understand her? Vivien belonged to a world so far removed from her own that it seemed impossible they had come from the same family, much less that they were twins.
Vivien was the first to break the silence. "It turns out you were right to refuse all my invitations to come to town. London is definitely not the place for you, country mouse. — Lisa Kleypas

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

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

I can see the driver as if I'm looking at him through binoculars, bending to adjust the volume on his radio, eyes wide at what he hears, which I can't understand because when he hits you there is only silence. My feet, pounding through the grass, make no sound. I know that my mouth is open, that air is rushing across my stretched vocal chords, but I hear nothing. You lift into the air and the car is past before you land silently at my feet, as if something as small as you couldn't possibly make a sound in a world where buildings can come down. — Philip Beard

We can't lose you," she said after a few moments of awkward as hell silence. "You have to understand that we aren't doing this because we don't care about Kat. We're doing this because we love you."
"But I love her," I said without hesitation.
Dee's eyes widened, probably since it was the first time she'd herd me say it out loud, well, about anyone other than my family. I wished I had said it more often, especially to Kat. Funny how that kind of shit always turns out in the end. While you're deep in something, you never say or do what you need to. It's always after the fact, when it's too late that you realize what you've should've said or done/
It couldn't be too late. I knew that. The fact that I was still alive was testament to that. Like Dee said, though, there were worse things than death. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

Silence is one of worst, most vocal enemies, yet people go through many bouts of depression not sharing what is happening. People don't understand that, but as someone who suffers from it, I can tell you that it's difficult to be objective about the gray.
I described depression to my therapist as a misty fog that surrounds me, heavy on my shoulders, pervading everything and nothing at all. I liken depression to a bird stealing into the depths of your soul, pecking at your disposition until nothing is left.
And that is when you break into pieces. — Rachel Thompson

If I had known what trouble you were bearing;
What griefs were in the silence of your face;
I would have been more gentle, and more caring,
And tried to give you gladness for a space.
I would have brought more warmth into the place,
If I had known.
If I had known what thoughts despairing drew you;
(Why do we never try to understand?)
I would have lent a little friendship to you,
And slipped my hand within your hand,
And made your stay more pleasant in the land,
If I had known. — Mary Carolyn Davies

If you cannot understand me in my speech, how can you understand me in my silence? — Ravi Zacharias

My laboratory is like a church because it is where I figure out what I believe. The machines drone a gathering hymn as I enter. I know whom I'll probably see, and I know how they'll probably act. I know there'll be silence; I know there'll be music, a time to greet my friends, and a time to leave others to their contemplation. There are rituals that I follow, some I understand and some I don't. Elevated to my best self, I strive to do each task correctly. My lab is a place to go on sacred days, as is a church. On holidays, when the rest of the world is closed, my lab is open. My lab is a refuge and an asylum. It is my retreat from the professional battlefield; it is the place where I coolly examine my wounds and repair my armor. And, just like church, because I grew up in it, it is not something from which I can ever really walk away. My — Hope Jahren

The constant reprimands made me hyperconscious of my own performance, and so instead of getting rid of self, I had become embedded in the egoism I was supposed to transcend. Now I was beginning to understand that a silence that is not clamorous with vexation and worried self-regard can become part of the texture of your mind, can seep into you, moment by moment, and gradually change you. — Karen Armstrong

In the world I am
Always a stranger
I do not understand its language
It does not understand my silence — Bei Dao

How devastating it is to be thought of as arrogant. Surely, we have known each other long enough and well enough, for her to understand that my silence only reflects my sense of trust and satisfaction. — Barbara Hodgson

After that, I became kind of fascinated by her and by what I guessed was her ability to hear music in the silence. Back then, I'd wanted to be able to do that, too. So I took to watching her play, and though I told myself the reason for my attention was because she was as dedicated a musician as I was and that she was cute, the truth was that I also wanted to understand what she heard in the silence. — Gayle Forman

For a moment, there was silnece, and then at Brooke's nod, the rest of the Squad, minus me, chimed in. "Yes, sir."
I said nothing. For one thing, I wasn't exactly keen on speaking in unison, and for another, I wasn't about to make any promises I couldn't keep.
"Toby."
I jumped in my seat. The Voice actually knew my name. And somehow, he had the freaky ability to ascertain that of all of us, I was the one who hadn't responded.
"Do you understand?"
I contemplated telling him what I didn't understand was his familial relationshiops, but stayed momentarily silent, causing everyone within a three-foot radius to kick me under the table at once.
"Ow!" I cleared my throat. "I mean, yes." I didn't throw the sir on the end, but apparently, that was good enough for the Voice.
"Excellent. Report in tonight, and we'll have more information for you all tomorrow. And girl?"
"Yes?"
"Congratulations on the homecoming nominations. We're all very proud. — Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Hey, we live each day, start each day, as if we had an endless number stretching out ahead of us. We don't, but that's how one has to face the day, right? I see an analogy with writing fiction: the story at hand probably won't come off well, and even if it does, it probably won't get published, but if it does there won't be any payment for it - and even if there is, almost nobody will read it, and most who do won't understand or like it. But you go ahead and write the story. What choices do you have? There's always silence, but that won't do for me." - Gordon Weaver (who is suddenly my hero, even though I don't know who he is). — Gordon Weaver

I was 9 years old when I had my first glimpse of wholeness. It was early Christmas morning and I was standing in my pajamas in the living room and looked out of the large windows. Outside the white snow flakes silently singled down toward a snowclad landscape. Suddenly I was filled with a feeling of being one with the slowly dancing snowflakes, one with the silent landscape.
I did not understand then that this was my first taste of meditation, but it created a deep thirst and a longing in my heart to return to this natural and effortless experience of being one with the Whole. — Swami Dhyan Giten

And sometimes if I want
To imagine I'm a lamb
(Or a whole flock
Spreading out all over the hillside
So I can be a lot of happy things at the same time),
It's only because I feel what I write at sunset,
Or when a cloud passes its hand over the light
And silence runs over the grass outside.
When I sit and write poems
Or, walking along the roads or pathways,
I write poems on the paper in my thoughts,
I feel a staff in my hand
And see my silhouette
On top of a knoll,
Looking after my flock and seeing my ideas,
Or looking after my ideas and seeing my flock,
With a silly smile like someone who doesn't understand what somebody's saying
But tries to pretend they do. — Alberto Caeiro

It was the first time I could actually understand the seduction and the allure of baring your throat to a predator. It had always seemed like madness to me, or the result of reading too many novels. It still did. But there was the barest sway of my body toward him.
His hair swung out to briefly curtain our faces. There was something in his expression that I couldn't entirely decipher.
And then he stepped back abruptly, his familiar smirk erasing that mysterious warmth I'd glimpsed.
Chloe was the first break the silence. She let out a shaky breath.
"Is it suddenly hot out here, or what?"
"Chapter 10 — Alyxandra Harvey

I should have said something ... But my mouth wouldn't open, and the longer I stood there in silence, the better I can to understand the problem. It wasn't that I had nothing to say to him. It was that I had too much to say. — Rachel Vincent

I do this thing for Rosie, you sleep with me"
I stared at him, open-mouthed and in stunned silence.
I did, of course, understand what he meant but he explained further.
"Not like last night, we'll both be naked and sexual acts will be performed."
My expression didn't change except maybe my mouth opened wider.
"I'll expect your participation."
Holly shit.
"Your avid participation."
Dear Lord in Heaven.
Eventually, I whispered, "You must be joking."
He shook his head and watched me.
I dropped my eyes, unable to hold his stqare.
"I think I need more coffee," I told his throat. — Kristen Ashley

I live for you," I say sadly.
She kisses my cheek. "Then you must live for more."
There's a long, terrible silence that stretches between us. She does not understand how her words wrench my heart, how she can twist me so easily. Because she does not love me like I love her. Her mind is too high. Mine too low. Am I not enough for her? — Pierce Brown

Yes, I'm a terrific teacher : Grow, Sarah, but not too much.
Understand yourself, but not better than I understand you. Be
brave, but not so brave you don't need me any more. Your silence
frightens me. When I'm in that silence, I hear nothing, I feel like
nothing. I can never pull you into my world of sound any more
than you can open some magic door and bring me into your
silence. I can say that now. — Mark Medoff

My poor scapegoat,
I almost love you
but would have cast, I know,
the stones of silence.
I am the artful voyeur
of your brain's exposed
and darkened combs,
your muscles' webbing
and all your numbered bones:
I who have stood dumb
when your betraying sisters,
cauled in tar,
wept by the railings,
who would connive
in civilized outrage
yet understand the exact
and tribal, intimate revenge.
-Punishment — Seamus Heaney

What I failed to see was that, by ending my life, I would cause interminable pain to my family and friends. I could not understand the heartbreak it would cause those around me. Nor did I consider that my brother, Joseph, might live the rest of his life in continual rage, or that my sister, Libby, might shut herself off from the world and fall into perpetual depression, silence, and sadness mistakenly blaming themselves for my death as many family members do when they lose someone they love to suicide. I certainly held no understanding of the enormous pain my mother and father would suffer because they lost their oldest son in such a terrifying and devastating way. They would not have a chance to watch me mature, marry, and perhaps have children. Instead, all of their hopes, aspirations, and dreams for me would be destroyed with my decision to end my life by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. — Kevin Hines

It is not easy for me to speak of the desert. Still less easy is it for me to scribe it as I do. There is so much that might be said; and yet no one who reads this will have understanding of the desert. Not even those who share this ship with me have it. One must go. I say again: one must go. I went. Perhaps there can be too much understanding. I have so much now, and that is why I will never forget this place. My companions understand nothing of that. The whisper of the sands, and the night silence when the sands no longer spoke. — Gene Wolfe

If I cannot understand my friend's silence, I will never get to understand his words. — Enoch Powell

The whole time I was hoping my silence would fit yours and exclamation marks would gently float across time and space so that boundaries would be crossed; the whole time I was praying you would read my eyes and understand what I was never able to understand. See, we were never about butterflies. We've always been about burning stars. All about us is unearthly and radiant. — Anna Akhmatova

Or had you no other means of capturing the grace of this creature except with a collar? Don't you realize that you destroy a rose if you crush it in your hand? I know that tone is unity which cannot be divided by words, I know that I am crushing a rose, but to shatter silence into words is one of my awkward ways of loving silence, & it is in this way that I have so often killed what I understand. — Clarice Lispector

Is it time for your period, or something?"
With unerring instinct, he'd found a great big red button, and pushed it. Wyatt fights to win, which means he fights dirty. I understand the concept because that's how I fight, too, but understanding it didn't stop me from reacting. I could practically feel my blood bubbling with steam. "What?"
He turned around, all controlled aggression, and damned if he didn't push the button again. "What is it about having a period that makes women so bitchy?"
... It was an effort, but I said as sweetly as possible, "It isn't that we're bitchier, it's that having a period makes us feel all tired and achy, so we have less tolerance for all the bullshit we normally SUFFER IN SILENCE." By the time the sentence ended the sweetness was long gone, my jaw was clenched, and I think my eyes were bugging out.
Wyatt took a step back, belatedly looking alarmed. — Linda Howard

Do you know how many nights I've spent twisting your English off my tongue? I do not take pride in your English. I want to stumble on my words. I want to speak with an accent so thick that it requires silence. I want you to struggle to understand me. Realize your English is not superior. Your English does not equate intelligence. Do not compliment me on how well I have accepted colonization. I do not want your pat on the back. I was forced to learn this language. I didn't choose to. Your English disconnects me from my people. I am deaf to my own sacred language because of your English.
Your English has done nothing for me. — Bilphena Yahwon