Jean Stafford Quotes

In love, we worry more about the meaning of silences than the meaning of words.

Silences make the real conversations between friends. Not the saying but the never needing to say is what counts.

My husband doesn't know what my songs are about - even when they're about him. He's very British in that way. He doesn't ask, and he doesn't want to be told.

A lot of the stuff that I do with Betty is in the eyes. A lot of the feelings that I evoke with her are unspoken, so that's been fun to play with.

The silent thing onstage allows for a kind of intimacy that no conversation can have. If I just shut up, we're forced to look at each other and really confront that moment.

The silence was part of the story I wanted to tell.

I think the things that are most intimate are nameless and shapeless.

Sometimes people give away more by not saying something.

They took to silence. They touched each other without comment and without progression. A hand on a hand, a clothed arm, resting on an arm. An ankle overlapping an ankle, as they sat on a beach, and not removed. One night they fell asleep, side by side... He slept curled against her back, a dark comma against her pale elegant phrase.

There was a pause - just long enough for an angel to pass, flying slowly.

Tatiana and the soldier were having a silence

There are times in life when language fails us, when everything that needs to be said can be expressed only by saying nothing at all.

The most important things to say are those which often I did not think necessary for me to say - because they were too obvious.

It's what people don't say that is often the most revealing.

If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.

She looked at me penetratingly. So I suppose you can figure out what happened next.

Supposedly I'm impossible to talk to. But it's honestly not me being difficult. Sometimes you just don't have a lot to say.

For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love.

When you go to a movie, it's about what's not being said. I tried to bring that to Greg Sumner. It was always about what's not being said.

The inarticulate speak longest.

Most of the time, people are afraid of silence, and I'm not.

It’s less the words they say than those they leave unsaid that split old friends apart.

For the longest time after that, neither of us said anything. I was unaccustomed to his silence, but I didn't mind it. I knew near everything about him, and he knew near everything about me, and all that made our quiet a kind of song. The kind you hum without even knowing what it is or why you're humming it. The kind that you've always known.

We sit silently and watch the world around us. This has taken a lifetime to learn. It seems only the old are able to sit next to one another and not say anything and still feel content. The young, brash and impatient, must always break the silence. It is a waste, for silence is pure. Silence is holy. It draws people together because only those who are comfortable with each other can sit without speaking. This is the great paradox.

He gives me a conflicted look and touches his lips to my forehead, right between my eyebrows. I close my eyes. I don't understand this, whatever it is. But I don't want to ruin it, so I say nothing. He doesn't move; he just stays there with his mouth pressed to my skin, and I stay there with my hands on his waist, for a long time.