Overcoming Silence Quotes

When I was child, I never spoke. Teacher used to write remarks on my note book. My mom sent me to a trainer. I started talking, and it gave me confidence.

My dad was quiet, angry, shut down. So my thing is: I express everything that's there. I want to get it all out.

What shames us, what we most fear to tell, does not set us apart from others; it binds us together if only we can take the risk to speak it.

Having not said anything the first time, it was somehow even more difficult to broach the subject the second time around.

After a lifetime of silence, it is difficult then to speak.

I think that all the silence is worse than all the violence, Fear is such a weak emotion that's why I despise it, We scared of almost everything, afraid to even tell the truth, So scared of what you think of me, I'm scared of even telling you...

I never used to speak at all. I always said Joe is the speaker of the family. I mean, I'd go to events and volunteer, but I was never a speaker.

We're all afraid of the same stuff. Mostly we're afraid that we're secretly not okay, that we're disgusting, or frauds, or about to be diagnosed with cancer. ... We want to teach you how to quiet the yammer ... how you can create comfort, inside and outside, how you can get warm, how you can feed yourself. And even learn to get through silence. ... There is a wilderness inside you, and a banquet. Both. [p. 253]

A man is reputed to have thought and eloquence; he cannot, for all that, say a word to his cousin or his uncle. They accuse his silence with as much reason as they would blame the insignificance of a dial in the shade. In the sun it will mark the hour. Among those who enjoy his thought, he will regain his tongue.

My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you. But for every real word spoken, for every attempt I had ever made to speak those truths for which I am still seeking, I had made contact with other women while we examined the words to fit a world in which we all believed, bridging our differences.

The fact that we are here and that I speak these words is an attempt to break that silence and bridge some of those differences between us, for it is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence. And there are so many silences to be broken.