“For it is only framed in space that beauty blooms. Only in space are events and objects and people unique and significant-and therefore beautiful. A tree has significance if one sees it against the empty face of sky. A note in music gains significance from the silences on either side. A candle flowers in the space of night. Even small and casual things take on significance if they are washed in space, like a few autumn grasses in one corner of an Oriental painting, the rest of the page bare.” PeopleIfsBeautifulFacesNightSidesSpaceSilenceBeautyTreeSkyEventsObjectsPaintingFlowerPagesUniqueGainsEmptyNotesCornersSignificantGrassAutumnSignificanceCandleCasualFramed Author:Anne Morrow Lindbergh
“When you wrote it didn't matter if hysteria sometimes came up in your face and voice (unless, of course, you let it find its way into your "literary voice") because writing was done in merciful privacy and silence. Even if you were partly out of your mind it might turn out to be all right: you could try for control even harder than Blanche Dubois was said to have tried, and with luck you could still bring off a sense of order and sanity on the page for the reader. Reading, after all, was a thing done in privacy and silence too.” IfsWayWritingTryingMindSaidStillsSometimesMatterDoneMightFacesOrderTurnsCoursesReadingVoiceSilenceReaderPagesHarderLuckPrivacyYour FaceSanityThings DoneMercifulHysteriaBlancheDubois Book:Young Hearts Crying Source: Young Hearts Crying
“I am obsessed by the idea of silence. I went through an entire library studying art, artists and their critics, philosophers, too, on the meaning and significance of the color white. I dreamed of white birds and white bears. I thought about the white pages of my mother's journals. I became enthralled with John Cage and his work, 4'33”, his masterpiece of ambient sound. Rauschenberg, too. And then at some point I let go. What sticks to the soul is what gets placed on the page. Maybe that's the unknown part, the mystery, the power of the empty page.” ArtIdeasSoulMotherArtistSoundWhiteSilenceStudyMysteryColorBearsLetting GoPagesBirdEmptySticksCriticsLibraryPhilosopherObsessedSignificanceJournalCagesMasterpieceAmbientColor WhiteStudying ArtWhite Birds Author:Terry Tempest Williams
“The silences express so much and are so crucial in music, and prose does not allow for the creation of these silences, these white spaces on the page or the computer screen.” DoeSpaceWhiteSilenceCreationComputerPagesScreensProseCrucialComputer ScreenWhite Space Author:Pattiann Rogers
“We go from Malachi to Matthew in one page of our scriptures, but that one piece of paper that separates the Old Testament from the New Testament represents 400 years of history - 400 years where there wasn't a prophet, 400 years where God's voice wasn't heard. And that silence was broken with the cry of a baby on Christmas night.” YearsNightVoiceSilencePiecesHeardCryBrokenBabyPaperPagesScriptureProphetTestamentNew TestamentOld TestamentOne PieceMatthew Author:Louie Giglio
“There is not much talking now. A silence falls upon them all. This is no time to talk of hedges and fields, or the beauties of any country. Sadness and fear and hate, how they well up in the heart and mind, whenever one opens pages of these messengers of doom. Cry for the broken tribe, for the law and the custom that is gone. Aye, and cry aloud for the man who is dead, for the woman and children bereaved. Cry, the beloved country, these things are not yet at an end. The sun pours down on the earth, on the lovely land that man cannot enjoy. He knows only the fear of his heart.” KnowsMenMindWellsHeartChildrenEndsCountryEarthLawHateFallEnjoySilenceTalkingSunGoneSadnessLandCryFieldsBrokenPagesLovelyBelovedCustomsTribesHeart And MindDoomMessengersBeloved CountryCry The Beloved Country Author:Alan Paton
“And then, at night, the lit lamp and the drawn curtain, with the flutter of the turned page and soft scrape of pen on paper the only sounds to break the silence between quarter- and quarter-chime.” NightSoundSilenceBreakPaperPagesPensQuartersCurtainsLitLampsChimes Book:Gaudy Night Source: Gaudy Night
“After a time I found that I could almost listen to the silence, which had a dimension all of its own. I started to attend to its strange and beautiful texture, which of course, it was impossible to express in words. I discovered that I felt at home and alive in the silence, which compelled me to enter my interior world and around there. Without the distraction of constant conversation, the words on the page began to speak directly to my inner self. They were no long expressing ideas that were simply interesting intellectually, but were talking directly to my own yearning and perplexity.” WorldLongIdeasSelfHomeBeautifulCoursesFoundSpeakFeltMy OwnInterestingSilenceTalkingAliveImpossibleStrangeConversationPagesConstantDimensionsDistractionYearningInteriorsCompelledInner SelfTexturePerplexityExpressing Ideas Author:Karen Armstrong
“So Mo began filling the silence with words. He lured them out of the pages as if they had only been waiting for his voice, words long and short, words sharp and soft, cooing, purring words. They danced through the room, painting stained glass pictures, tickling the skin. Even when Meggie nodded off she could still hear them, although Mo had closed the book long ago. Words that explained the world to her, its dark side and its light side, words that built a wall to keep out bad dreams. And not a single bad dream came over that wall for the rest of the night.” IfsWorldLongStillsBookDreamLightNightWaitingSidesVoiceDarkRoomsSilencePaintingWallPagesBuiltSkinsGlassesLong AgoFillingDark SideBad DreamPurringShort WordsStained GlassTickling Author:Cornelia Funke
“There was something awful about terror trapped behind silence. About latent emotions that couldn't be acted out." "Cole's thoughts on page 248 of Linger.” EmotionBehindsSilencePagesTerrorAwfulTrappedLatent Author:Maggie Stiefvater