Clarice Lispector Quotes

If the room falls silent for a moment, all I hear is white noise.

I missed Rosaleen's snoring the way you'd miss the sound of the ocean waves after you've gotten used to sleeping with them. I didn't realize how it had comforted me. Quiteness has a strange, spongy hum that can nearly break your eardrums.

There's no such thing as silence. Something is always happening that makes a sound.

My favorite piece [piece of music] is the one we hear all the time if we are quiet.

In fact at home I sometimes like to be quiet and hear the sounds of the world outside.

I don't know what silence sounds like anymore.

If I were queen for a day, every city would have to spend one hour in utter silence: no music in shops and restaurants, no honking of horns, no conversations on mobile phones. Only birds would be allowed to sing.

The loudest noise in the world is silence.

No more words. In the name of this place we drink in with our breathing, stay quiet like a flower. So the nightbirds will start singing.

The world is quiet here.

Nature hav no music; nor would ther be for theeany better melody in the April woods at dawnthan what an old stone-deaf labourer, lying awakeo'night in his comfortless attic, might perchancebe aware of, when the rats run amok in his thatch?

You see all I need is a whisper in a world that only shouts.

The greatest sound in the theater is silence.

I know that when the world surrenders, pallid, to repose, the murmur of a tranquil stream through the deep silence flows.

ELECTED Silence, sing to me And beat upon my whorlèd ear, Pipe me to pastures still and be The music that I care to hear.

It isn't necessary that you leave home. Sit at your desk and listen. Don't even listen, just wait. Don't wait, be still and alone. The whole world will offer itself to you.

Whispering can be a rest from a noisy world of words.

In every sound, the hidden silence sleeps.

The unwaking world was as hushed as a deep forest.

Other sound than the owl's voice there was none, save the falling of a fountain into its stone basin; for, it was one of those dark nights that hold their breath by the hour together, and then heave a long low sigh, and hold their breath again.

Silence is difficult and arduous, it is not to be played with.

Nothing is more useful than silence.

Be silent and safe-silence never betrays you.

Silence never yet betrayed any one!

And silence, like darkness, can be kind; it, too, is a language.