Keep quiet Quotes

“Healthy ChoicesHold stillKeep quiet.Get a degree to learn how to talksaying nothing.Catch a good manby being demure.the one your mother chooses.Let him climb youwhenever his urge,amidst headachesand menstrual achesand screaming infants.And when he bidsquick, turn over.Hold still.Make your tonguea slab of cementa white stone etchedwith your name.Kill your stories with knivesand knitting needlesand Clorox bleach.Hide in your mysteriousnessby saying nothing.Starch your thoughtswith ironed shirts.Tie your angerwith a knot inyour throatand when he comeswithout concernswallow it.Hold still.Keep desirehopeless as iceand sleepless nightsand painful as pinched eyelid.Keep your fingersfrom the razor,keep your longingto severhis condescensionsafely in your douchbag.Turn the bladeagainst yourself.Don't twitchas your slashed wristsstain your bathroom tiles.Disinfect with Pine Sol.Hold still. Keep quiet.Keep tight your lips,keep dead your dreams,keep cold your heart.Keep quiet.And he will shoutpraisesto yourperfection.”

“If you really want to be different, you'd better keep quiet and be a good person on the inside.”

“It's one of the worst-kept secrets of family life that all parents have a preferred son or daughter, and the rules for acknowledging it are the same everywhere: The favored kids recognize their status and keep quiet about it - the better to preserve the good thing they've got going and to keep their siblings off their back.”

“But Balthamos couldn't tell; he only knew that half his heart had been extinguished. He couldn't keep still: he flew up again, scouring the sky as if to seek out Baruch in this cloud or that, calling, crying, calling; and then he'd be overcome with guilt, and fly down to urge Will to hide and keep quiet, and promise to watch over him tirelessly; and then the pressure of his grief would crush him to the ground, and he'd remember every instance of kindness and courage that Baruch had ever shown, and there were thousands, and he'd forgotten none of them; and he'd cry that a nature so gracious could ever be snuffed out, and he'd soar into the skies again, casting about in every direction, reckless and wild and stricken, cursing the air, the clouds, the stars.”

“Like most people, when I look back, the family house is held in time, or rather it is now outside of time, because it exists so clearly and it does not change, and it can only be entered through a door in the mind. I like it that pre-industrial societies, and religious cultures still, now, distinguish between two kinds of time – linear time, that is also cyclical because history repeats itself, even as it seems to progress, and real time, which is not subject to the clock or the calendar, and is where the soul used to live. This real time is reversible and redeemable. It is why, in religious rites of all kinds, something that happened once is re-enacted – Passover, Christmas, Easter, or, in the pagan record, Midsummer and the dying of the god. As we participate in the ritual, we step outside of linear time and enter real time. Time is only truly locked when we live in a mechanised world. Then we turn into clock-watchers and time-servers. Like the rest of life, time becomes uniform and standardised. When I left home at sixteen I bought a small rug. It was my roll-up world. Whatever room, whatever temporary place I had, I unrolled the rug. It was a map of myself. Invisible to others, but held in the rug, were all the places I had stayed – for a few weeks, for a few months. On the first night anywhere new I liked to lie in bed and look at the rug to remind myself that I had what I needed even though what I had was so little. Sometimes you have to live in precarious and temporary places. Unsuitable places. Wrong places. Sometimes the safe place won’t help you. Why did I leave home when I was sixteen? It was one of those important choices that will change the rest of your life. When I look back it feels like I was at the borders of common sense, and the sensible thing to do would have been to keep quiet, keep going, learn to lie better and leave later. I have noticed that doing the sensible thing is only a good idea when the decision is quite small. For the life-changing things, you must risk it. And here is the shock – when you risk it, when you do the right thing, when you arrive at the borders of common sense and cross into unknown territory, leaving behind you all the familiar smells and lights, then you do not experience great joy and huge energy. You are unhappy. Things get worse. It is a time of mourning. Loss. Fear. We bullet ourselves through with questions. And then we feel shot and wounded. And then all the cowards come out and say, ‘See, I told you so.’ In fact, they told you nothing.”

“Are you listening to the ones who keep quiet?”

“Keep quiet and the enemy will reveal himself.”

“Think and keep quiet among those you don't trust.”

“You see things You keep quiet about them. You understand.”