There’s an organic grocery store just off the highway exit. I can’t remember the last time I wentshopping for food.” A smile glittered in his eyes. “I might have gone overboard.”I walked into the kitchen, with gleaming stainless-steel appliances, black granite countertops, andwalnut cabinetry. Very masculine, very sleek. I went for the fridge first. Water bottles, spinach andarugula, mushrooms, gingerroot, Gorgonzola and feta cheeses, natural peanut butter, and milk onone side. Hot dogs, cold cuts, Coke, chocolate pudding cups, and canned whipped cream on theother. I tried to picture Patch pushing a shopping cart down the aisle, tossing in food as it pleasedhim. It was all I could do to keep a straight face.

إننا نتفاهم بالصمت ! ..لأنه في الحب الصادق لا يحتاج الانسان أن يتكلم وإنما لأن يحس وأن يتصرف بما يمليه عليه هذا الحب من سلوك وأفعال

A single word can brighten the faceof one who knows the value of words.Ripened in silence, a single wordacquires a great energy for work.War is cut short by a word,and a word heals the wounds,and there’s a word that changespoison into butterand honey.Let a word mature inside yourself.Withhold the unripened thought.Come and understand the kind of wordthat reduces money and riches to dust.Know when to speak a wordand when not to speak at all.A single word turns the universe of hellinto eight paradises.Follow the Way. Don’t be fooledby what you already know. Be watchful.Reflect before you speak.A foolish mouth can brand your soul.Yunus, say one last thingabout the power of words –Only the word “I”divides me from God.

The House Was Quiet and the World Was CalmThe house was quiet and the world was calm. The reader became the book; and summer night Was like the conscious being of the book. The house was quiet and the world was calm. The words were spoken as if there was no book, Except that the reader leaned above the page, Wanted to lean, wanted much to be The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom The summer night is like a perfection of thought. The house was quiet because it had to be. The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind: The access of perfection to the page. And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world, In which there is no other meaning, itself Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself Is the reader leaning late and reading there.

Would my head were a head of lettuce. I drove the last car over the Sagamore Bridge before the state police closed it off. The Cape Cod Canal all atempest beneath. No cars coming, no cars going. The bridge cables flapping like rubber bands. You think in certain circumstances a few thousand feet of bridge isn’t a thousand miles? The hurricane wiped out Dennis. Horace thanked God for insurance. I saved our little girl. You want me to say, Hurrah! Hurrah! but I can’t, I won’t, because to save her once isn’t to save her, and still she thumps as if the world was something thumpable. As if it wasn’t silence on a fundamental level. Yap on, wife, yap on. Thump, daughter, thump. Louder, Orangutan, louder. I can’t hear you.

The Greenland fjords are peculiar for the spells of completely quiet weather, when there is not enough wind to blow out a match and the water is like a sheet of glass. The kayak hunter must sit in his boat without stirring a finger so as not to scare the shy seals away. Actually, he can only move his eyes, as even the slightest move otherwise might mean game lost. The sun, low in the sky, sends a glare into his eyes, and the landscape around moves into the realm of the unreal. The reflex from the mirror-like water hypnotizes him, he seems to be unable to move, and all of a sudden it is as if he were floating in a bottomless void, sinking, sinking, and sinking.... Horror-stricken, he tries to stir, to cry out, but he cannot, he is completely paralyzed, he just falls and falls.

When I did a therapist education in USA 1984, one of the course leaders – who had given personal and spiritual guidance to thousands of seekers of truth from all over the world, and who I consider to be one of the best spiritual therapists in the world – said that I was going to get enlightened, that I would ”disappear into the silence”. I did not really understand what he meant then, and it was totally absurd for me when other course participants congratulated me afterwards. The thought that I was going to be enlightened was totally absurd for me. For me enlightenment was something that happened to special and chosen persons like Osho, Buddha, Jesus, Lao-Tzu and Krishnamurti. I did not feel either special or chosen. I did not feel worthy of being enlightened.

Humph.” She peered down suspiciously as he parted the leaves to reveal the choke. “That doesn’t look very tasty.”“That’s because it isn’t,” he said. “Pay heed: the artichoke is a shy vegetable. She covers herself in spine-tipped leaves that must be carefully peeled away, and underneath shields her treasure with a barricade o’ soft needles. They must be tenderly, but firmly, scraped aside. Ye must be bold, for if yer not, she’ll never reveal her soft heart.”He finished cutting away the thistles and placed the small, tender heart on the center of her plate.She wrinkled her nose. “That’s it? But it’s so small.”“Ah, and d’ye judge a thing solely upon size alone?”She made a choking sound.

And eventually in that house where everyone, even the fugitive hiding in the cellar from his faceless enemies, finds his tongue cleaving dryly to the roof of his mouth, where even the sons of the house have to go into the cornfield with the rickshaw boy to joke about whores and compare the length of their members and whisper furtively about dreams of being film directors (Hanif's dream, which horrifies his dream-invading mother, who believes the cinema to be an extension of the brothel business), where life has been transmuted into grotesquery by the irruption into it of history, eventually in the murkiness of the underworld he cannot help himself, he finds his eyes straying upwards, up along delicate sandals and baggy pajamas and past loose kurta and above the dupatta, the cloth of modesty, until eyes meet eyes, and then

I agree with Proust in this, he says, that books create their own silences in ways that friends rarely do. And the silence that grows palpable when one has finished a canto of Dante, he says, is quite different from the silence that grows palpable when one has reached the end of Oedipus at Colonus. The most terrible thing that has happened to people today, he says, is that they have grown frightened of silence. Instead of seeking it as a friend and as a source of renewal they now try in every way they can to shut it out... the fear of silence is the fear of loneliness, he says, and the fear of loneliness is the fear of silence. People fear silence, he says, because they have lost the ability to trust the world to bring about renewal. Silence for them means only the recognition that they have been abandoned... How can people find the strength to be happy if they are so terrified of silence?

As I said, I don’t expect you to understand—”“And I don’t,” he cut in. “Ye ask how I can live a life that I know will end with the hangman’s noose. Well, at least I am alive. Ye might as well have climbed inside yer husband’s coffin and let yerself be buried with his corpse.”Her hand flashed out before she’d thought about it, the smack against his cheek loud in the little courtyard.Silence had her eyes locked with Michael’s, her chest rising and falling swiftly, but she was aware that Bert and Harry had looked up. Even Mary and Lad had paused in their play.Without taking his gaze from hers, Michael reached out and grasped her hand. He raised her hand to his lips and softly kissed the center of her palm.He looked at her, her hand still at his lips. “Don’t take to yer grave afore yer time, Silence, m’love.

She swallowed, watching as the servants and Harry and Bert trooped out of the room. Lad, apparently not the brightest dog in the world, sat down next to Mickey O’Connor and leaned against his leg.Mr. O’Connor looked at the dog, looked at the damp spot growing on his breeches where the dog was leaning, and sighed. “I find me life is not as quiet as it used to be afore ye came to me palace, Mrs. Hollingbrook.”Silence lifted her chin. “You’re a pirate, Mr. O’Connor. I cannot believe your life was ever very quiet.”He gave her an ironic look. “Aye, amazin’, isn’t it? Yet since yer arrival me servants no longer obey me and I return home to find me kitchen flooded.” He crossed to a cupboard and took down a china teapot, a tin of tea, and a teacup. “And me dog smells like a whorehouse.”Silence glanced guiltily at Lad. “The only soap we could find was rose scented.

He shook his head, just looking at me. - "What?" I asked.- "Nothing" he said.- "Why are you looking at me like that?"Augustus half smiled. "Because you`re beautiful. I enjoy looking at beautiful people, and I decided a while ago not to deny myself the simpler pleasures of existence." A brief awkward silence ensued. Augustus plowed through: "I mean, particularly given that, as you so deliciously pointed out, all of this will end in oblivion and everything."I kind of scoffed or sighed or exhaled in a way that was vaguely coughy and then said, "I`m not beau-"- "You are like a millennial Natalie Portman. Like V for Vendetta Natalie Portman."- "Never seen it."- "Really?" he asked. "Pixie-haired gorgeous girl dislikes authority and can`t help but fall for a boy she knows is trouble. It`s your autobiography, so far as I can tell."His every syllable flirted. Honestly, he kind of turned me on. I didn`t even know that guys could turn me on - not, like, in real life.

Music is a complete evocation – like a smell. It can bring an entire memory and feeling back to you in a rush. Much more complete than even a photograph. You allow yourself a certain visual distance with photos – not music. It envelopes you – there’s no way to escape it. It’s a great test of sensitivity – the degree of reaction to music. I use it all the time. I call it my ‘Music Test.’ People today don’t want to hear the truth. They’re really afraid of tranquility and silence – they’re afraid they might begin to understand their own motivations too well. They keep a steady stream of noise going to protect themselves, to build a wall against the truth. Like African natives, beating on their drums, rattling their gourds, shaking the bells to scare off evil spirits. As long as there’s enough noise, there’s nothing to fear – or hear. But they will listen. Times are changing.

For a moment, there was silnece, and then at Brooke's nod, the rest of the Squad, minus me, chimed in. "Yes, sir."I said nothing. For one thing, I wasn't exactly keen on speaking in unison, and for another, I wasn't about to make any promises I couldn't keep. "Toby."I jumped in my seat. The Voice actually knew my name. And somehow, he had the freaky ability to ascertain that of all of us, I was the one who hadn't responded. "Do you understand?"I contemplated telling him what I didn't understand was his familial relationshiops, but stayed momentarily silent, causing everyone within a three-foot radius to kick me under the table at once."Ow!" I cleared my throat. "I mean, yes." I didn't throw the sir on the end, but apparently, that was good enough for the Voice. "Excellent. Report in tonight, and we'll have more information for you all tomorrow. And girl?""Yes?""Congratulations on the homecoming nominations. We're all very proud.