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Quiet Quotes

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Quiet Quotes

“Synonyms know each other like old colleagues, like a set of friends who've seen the world together. They swap stories, reminisce about their origins and forget that though they are similar, they are entirely different, and though they share a certain set of attributes, one can never be the other. Because a quiet night is not the same as a silent one, a firm man is not the same as a steady one, and a bright light is not the same as a brilliant one because the way they wedge themselves into a sentence changes everything.”

“In a brilliant fusion of fact and fiction, Jayne Anne Phillips has written the novel of the year. It's the story of a serial killer's crimes and capture, yes, but it's also a compulsively readable story of how one brave woman faces up to acts of terrible violence in order to create something good and strong in the aftermath. Quiet Dell will be compared to In Cold Blood, but Phillips offers something Capote could not: a heroine who lights up the dark places and gives us hope in our humanity.”

“Short story writers simply do what human beings have always done. They write stories because they have to; because they cannot rest until they have tried as hard as they can to write the stories. They cannot rest because they are human, and all of us need to speak into the silence of mortality, to interrupt and ever so briefly stop that quiet flow, and with stories try to understand at least some of it.”

“To me representing clairvoyance, how was I going to achieve that, how I was going to capture that? For me, it all became about her gaze and the way she takes you in. It's a rhythmic thing and a stillness thing to consider but these are little details, little nuances. We were invited to the sanctity of her home and there were roosters running around and she's screaming, "Jackie, be quiet!" Even though she's in the middle of the thing. And these are the details that we wanted to incorporate into our story.”

“My mom tells this story that even when I was in the womb, my father played the piano and she sang. So, before I officially got here, I was already surrounded by music. I also like the way my father explains it. When I was about 3-years old, in order to keep me quiet, my father would put me in the bassinet and either put on some music or play the piano. When he started playing, I got quiet and eventually went to sleep. He said by the time I turned 3, I just climbed up on the piano and started playing it with the attitude of I'm gonna play dis here piano.”

“Now I am in the place I call this wide wide Heaven because it includes all my simplest desires but also the most humble and grand. The word my grandfather uses is comfort. So there are cakes and pillows and colors galore, but underneath this more obvious patchwork quilt are places like a quiet room where you can go and hold someone's hand and not have to say anything. Give no story. Make no claim. Where you can live at the edge of your skin for as long as you wish.”

“We are all a volume on a shelf of a library, a story unto ourselves, never possibly described with one word or even very accurately with thousands. A person is never as quiet or unrestrained as they seem, or as bad or good, as vulnerable or as strong, as sweet or as fiesty; we are thickly layered, page upon lying page, behind simple covers. And love - it is not the book itself, but the binding. It can rip us apart or hold us together.”

“In this modern world where activity is stressed almost to the point of mania, quietness as a childhood need is too often overlooked. Yet a child's need for quietness is the same today as it has always been--it may even be greater--for quietness is an essential part of all awareness. In quiet times and sleepy times a child can dwell in thoughts of his own, and in songs and stories of his own.”

“When you look into the faces of these quiet creatures who don't know how to tell stories--who are mute, who can't make themselves heard, who fade into the woodwork, who only think of the perfect answer after the fact, after they're back at home, who can never think of a story that anyone else will find interesting--is there not more depth and more meaning in them? You can see every letter of every untold story swimming on their faces, and all the signs of silence, dejection, and even defeat. You can even imagine your own face in those faces, can't you?”

“To me a good book is like a quiet friend—a friend who’s happy to share thoughts and feelings with you, who’s always there when you need them. Best of all, this friend doesn’t have any secrets. They trust you to understand them. They take you to their innermost places. They share their sensations and emotions—and they let you experience them. Wherever you go and however you feel, they are always by your side. For an hour, a day, a week, or forever, their life becomes yours. Their story is your story. That’s the kind of book I’m trying to write.”

“Reading fiction is important. It is a vital means of imagining a life other than our own, which in turn makes us more empathetic beings. Following complex story lines stretches our brains beyond the 140 characters of sound-bite thinking, and staying within the world of a novel gives us the ability to be quiet and alone, two skills that are disappearing faster than the polar icecaps.”

“IGNORANCE I didn’t know love would make me this crazy, with my eyes like the river Ceyhun carrying me in its rapids out to sea,where every bit of shattered boat sinks to the bottom. An alligator lifts its head and swallows the ocean, then the ocean floor becomes a desert covering the alligator in sand drifts. Changes do happen. I do not know how, or what remains of what has disappeared into the absolute. I hear so many stories and explanations, but I keep quiet, because I don’t know anything, and because something I swallowed in the ocean has made me completely content with ignorance.”

“When spiritual friends share their stories, the others listen without working. They rest. There’s nothing to fix, nothing to improve. A spiritual community feels undisturbed quiet as they listen, certainly burdened . . . but still resting in the knowledge that the life within, the passion for holiness, is indestructible. It needs only to be nourished and released.”

“There are stories within stories, whispered in the quiet of the night, shouted above the roar of the day, and played out between lovers and enemies, strangers and friends. But all are fragile things made of just twenty-six letters arranged and re-arranged to form tales and imaginings which will dazzle your senses, haunt your imagination and move you to the very depths of your soul.”