Jodi Picoult Quotes

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.

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.

Silence is a way of saying: we do not have to entertain each other; we are okay as we are.

We didn't talk much. But we didn't need to.

There is a silence, the child of love, which expresses everything, and proclaims more loudly than the tongue is able to do.

When you're feeling very comfortable with an actor, you are doing nothing.

Silence is the language of inertia.

Conversation in its true meaning isn't all wagging the tongue; sometimes it is a deeply shared silence.

The silence that falls between them is a comfortable one. He longs to reach over and touch her, but he resists, fearful of destroying the delicate camaraderie they are building. He steals glances instead, watching the way the light falls over her skin. Several times he catches her regarding him in a similar manner, and the moments when she holds his eyes with hers are sublime.

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.

To the questioning glance of love, as it flashes out and then conceals itself, speech has no reply; the smile, the kiss, the sigh answer.

Sometimes at the best moments a single word or a look is enough.'

And I have Julian. I found him, and he followed me. I reach out in the half dark, wordlessly, and find his hands. We interlace our fingers, and though he doesn't say anything either, I can feel the warmth and energy passing between us, a soundless dialogue. Thank you, he is saying, and I am saying, I am so happy, I am so happy, I needed you to be safe.

And I look at her sitting there and she looks across the river and we wait as the dawn fully arrives, each of us knowing. Each of us knowing the other.

The snowy owl has eyes that look just like mine, especially when it widens them. And while I stand there, staring at it, lowering my sunglasses, something unspoken passes between me and the bird - there's this weird kind of tension, a bizarre pressure, that fuels the following, which starts, happens, ends, very quickly.

I hear my heartbeat. I have been looking at him too long, but then, he has been looking back, and I feel like we are both trying to say something the other can't hear, though I could be imagining it. Too long - and now even longer, my heart even louder, his tranquil eyes swallowing me whole.

We always know which is the best road to follow, but we follow only the road that we have become accustomed to.

I love your silences, they are like mine. You are the only being before whom I am not distressed by my own silences. You have a vehement silence, one feels it is charged with essences, it is a strangely alive silence, like a trap open over a well, from which one can hear the secret murmur of the earth itself.

I just want you inside, baby, we don't need to talk about promises.

When people refuse to speak out for too long, it's like water that's stagnant and starts to rot!

We sit for a few more moments, although there's really nothing left to say. This is new to me, too, an entire conversation that takes place in silence, because the heart has its own language. I will remember what Eric says even though he doesn't say a word. I will tell it to her.

I think communication starts when words are not present at all ... I think we put so much emphasis on language, actually silence is so much more important.

Sometimes not talking is effortless, and other times it’s more exhausting than lifting pianos.

I didn’t mind the quiet stretches. It was like we were trying out the idea of being side by side.

I never said nothing..." "I know you never! I could hear you not saying anything! You've got the loudest silences I ever did hear from anyone who wasn't dead!