The difficulty is that I have no mouth through which I can speak. I can't make myself understood, not in your world, the world of bodies, of tongues and fingers; and most of the time I have no listeners, not on your side of the river. Those of you who may catch the odd whisper, the odd squeak, so easily mistake my words for breezes rustling the dry reeds, for bats at twilight, for bad dreams.

Just do your duty in silence. When in doubt, when flat on your back, you can look at the ceiling. Who knows what you may see, up there? Funeral wreaths and angels, constellations of dust, stellar or otherwise, the puzzles of spiders. There's always something to occupy the inquiring mind.

This is "poetry," this song of the wind across teeth, this message from the flayed tongue to the flayed ear.

there's often more in silences than in what is actually said — in the lips pressed together, the head turned away, the quick sideways glance. The shoulders drawn up as if carrying a heavy weight.

I long for periods without saying anything at all. I can be free of words now, I can lapse back into wordlessness, I can sink back into the rhythyms of transience as if into bed.

Let us always guard our tongue; not that it should always be silent, but that it should speak at the proper time.

We aren't allowed to have any opinions. People can tell you to keep your mouth shut, but it doesn't stop you having your own opinion. Even if people are still very young, they shouldn't be prevented from saying what they think.

You can't forbid someone to have an opinion, no matter how young they are!

Everything slows down when we listen and stop trying to fix the unfixable.

The hard silence between frustrated people always feels cluttered. But holy silence is spacious and inviting. You can drink it down. We offer it to ourselves when we work, rest, meditate, bike, read. When we hike by ourselves, we hear a silence still pristine with crunching leaves and birdsong. Silence can be a system of peace, which is mercy, easily offered to a friend needing quiet, harder when the person is one's own annoying self.

Every sound is by definition a stop, which is how we can hear it.

While others who have something to say or who want to be effectual, like musicians or baseball players or politicians, have to get out there in front of people, writers, who tend to be shy, get to stay home and still be public. There are many obvious advantages to this. You don't have to dress up, for instance, and you can't hear them boo you right away.