If we try to listen we find it extraordinarily difficult, because we are always projecting our opinions and ideas, our prejudices, our background, our inclinations, our impulses; when they dominate, we hardly listen at all to what is being said...One listens and therefore learns, only in a state of silence, in which this whole background is in abeyance, is quite; then, it seems to me, it is possible to communicate
We say and exclaim within ourselves without breaking silence, in a tumult where everything speaks except our mouths. The realities of the soul are none the less real for being invisible and impalpable.
At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless; Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is, But neither arrest nor movement. And do not all it fixity, Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards, Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point, There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
You are too generous to trifle with me. If your feelings are still what they were last April, tell me so at once. My affections and wishes are unchanged; but one word from you will silence me on this subject for ever.
Know, therefore, that from the greater silence I shall return... Forget not that I shall come back to you... A little while, a moment of rest upon the wind, and another woman shall bear me.
In the silence of their studios, busied for days at a time with works which leave the mind relatively free, painters become like women; their thoughts can revolve around the minor facts of life and penetrate their hidden meaning.