Against a broken heart, even absurdity falters.
Because words fall away.
A dialogue of silence.
That deafens.

But above all, silence is the dissipation of our language. ... In the silence of a walk, when you end up losing the use of words because by then you are doing nothing but walk, ... in that silence you hear better, because you are finally hearing what has no vocation to be retranslated, recoded, reformatted.

O my LORD, I am not eloquent, neither heretofore, nor since thou hast spoken unto thy servant: but I am slow of speech, and of a slow tongue.

If I tell some one that I love him – as I may have told a hundred others – my words will convey nothing to him; but the silence which will ensue, if I do indeed love him, will make clear in what depths lie the roots of my love, and will in its turn give birth to a conviction, that shall itself be silent; and in the course of a lifetime, this silence and this conviction will never again be the same. …

Jesus has a very special love for you. As for me, the silence and emptiness is so great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear. The tongue moves but does not speak.

Everest silences you...when you come down, nothing seems worth saying, nothing at all. You find the nothingness wrapping you up, like a sound. Non-being. You can't keep it up, of course. the world rushes in soon enough. What shuts you up is, I think, the sight you've had of perfection: why speak if you can't manage perfect thoughts, perfect sentences? It feels like a betrayal of what you've been through. But it fades; you accept that certain compromises, closures, are required if you're to continue.

The need to speak, even if one has nothing to say, becomes more pressing when one has nothing to say, just as the will to live becomes more urgent when life has lost its meaning. (p. 30)

My solemn exasperation was to her the silence of love.

I've ceased to smile long ago,
The bitter winds now chill my lips,
Another hope was just let go,
Another song was added since.
Against my will, I'll cede this song
To people's laughter and offense,
Because love's silence for the soul
Is too unbearably immense.

No words suffice the secret soul to show, For truth denies all eloquence to woe.

Yes, in my life, since we must call it so, there were three things, the inability to speak, the inability to be silent, and solitude, that’s what I’ve had to make the best of.

My feelings for you shame me into silence.

Through want of heart fear seizes on my tongue.

I had to climb a mountain. There were all kinds of obstacles in the way. I had now to jump over a ditch, now to get over a hedge, and finally to stand still because I had lost my breath.

This was the dream of a stutterer.