"There are all kinds of silences and each of them means a different thing. There is the silence that comes with morning in a forest, and this is different from the silence of a sleeping city. There is silence after a rainstorm, and before a rainstorm, and these are not the same. There is the silence of emptiness, the silence of fear, the silence of doubt. There is a certain silence that can emanate from a lifeless object as from a chair lately used, or from a piano with old dust upon its keys, or from anything that has answered to the need of a man, for pleasure or for work. This kind of silence can speak. Its voice may be melancholy, but it is not always so; for the chair may have been left by a laughing child or the last notes of the piano may have been raucous and gay. Whatever the mood or the circumstance, the essence of its quality may linger in the silence that follows. It is a soundless echo."
— Beryl Markham (West with the Night)

"Life is life and fun is fun, but it's all so quiet when the goldfish die."
— Beryl Markham (West with the Night)

"I have learned that if you must leave a place that you have lived in and loved and where all your yesterdays are burried deep--leave it anyway except a slow way, leave it the fastest way you can."
— Beryl Markham (West with the Night)