X Ways of Speaking about Silence

 

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"Everyone is driven by the urge to 'say something'...We are oppressed by silence. We feel that to be silent before a wrongdoing is to be an accomplice to it, and that to be silent before the obscure is to be overwhelmed by it."

        - Resil Mojares, on "Writing a column" in House of Memory  (1997, p.7-8), Anvil Publishing.

"...the problem of speechlessness, which is a state without agency... that we feel impressed upon by things but unable to push back at them."

        - Mark Doty on The Art of Description: World into Word (2010), Graywolf Press. 

"Everytime my country

breaks into a war of words,

I make sure I break out

the heavy artillery

of my silence. "

        -Allen Samsuya, "34" (2022).