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Exlpore more Silence quotes

"Speech is human, silence is divine, yet also brutish and dead: therefore we must learn both arts."

"She was in a terrible marriage and she couldn't talk to anyone. He used to hit her, and in the beginning she told him that if it ever happened again, she would leave him. He swore that it wouldn't and she believed him. But it only got worse after that, like when his dinner was cold, or when she mentioned that she'd visited with one of the neighbors who was walking by with his dog. She just chatted with him, but that night, her husband threw her into a mirror."

"Answer only when asked, otherwise do not say anything. Don't say a thing in this world. To tell [give advice] is the biggest disease. Your beard grows without you saying anything, doesn't it?"

"I couldn't think of anything that didn't sound trivial, so I just nodded."

"When you are truly silent, the whole existence speaks to you."

"It's kind of like Silence of the lambs meets Boogey Nights."

"And the silence comes... all people keep silence just to hear the story..."
Explore more quotes by Margaret Atwood

"All you have to do, I tell myself, is keep your mouth shut and look stupid. It shouldn't be that hard."

"Things that are falling apart encourage me: whatever else, I'm in better shape than they are."

"I shouldn't have taken a vow of silence, I told myself. What did I want? Nothing much. Just a memorial. But what is a memorial, when you come right down to it, but a commemoration of wounds endured? Endured, and resented. Without memory, there can be no revenge."

"All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel.All of them?Sure, he says. Think about it. There's escaping from the wolves, fighting the wolves, capturing the wolves, taming the wolves. Being thrown to the wolves, or throwing others to the wolves so the wolves will eat them instead of you. Running with the wolf pack. Turning into a wolf. Best of all, turning into the head wolf. No other decent stories exist."

"And if I talk to him, I'll say something wrong, give something away. I can feel it coming, a betrayal of myself."

"After having imposed itself on us like the egomaniac it is, clamouring about its own needs, foisting upon us its own sordid and perilous desires, the body's final trick is simply to absent itself. Just when you need it, just when you could use an arm or a leg, suddenly the body has other things to do. It falters, it buckles under you; it melts away as if made of snow, leaving nothing much. Two lumps of coal, an old hat, a grin made of pebbles. The bones dry sticks, easily broken."

"The beginning of Canadian cultural nationalism was not 'Am I really that oppressed?' but 'Am I really that boring?'"
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