We fear silence. I said once that darkness is chaos itself, that in darkness any and all things might arise unseen like the cat from Pandora’s evil box. Silence is like that, but more profound. There was darkness before the dawn of time, and silence, too, but silence was the deeper thing, the canvas against which all thought is measured. You have heard stories of men driven mad in quiet rooms by the rushing of their own blood. It is not true. It is not the sound that does it, it is themselves. In silence, they are confronted with their own natures—and with nature itself—and cannot look it in
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