For many Tibetans it was the first time they had heard about it. There were thousands listening in complete silence.

I saw old Autumn in the misty morn Stand shadowless like silence, listening To Silence

Your silence creates a vacuum for others to fill The key is to stay present and keep listening. The silence of holding steady is different from the silence of holding back.

You can listen to silence, Reuven. I've begun to realize that you can listen to silence and learn from it. It has a quality and a dimension all its own. It talks to me sometimes. I feel myself alive in it. It talks. And I can hear it.
...
You have to want to listen to it, and then you can hear it. It has a strange, beautiful texture. It doesn't always talk. Sometimes - sometimes it cries, and you can hear the pain of the world in it. It hurts to listen to it then. But you have to.

We are living in a culture of silence. Even though [some form of sexual assault] occurs 23 times in an hour in our country, even though it happens that often, we don't yet live in a society where survivors can comfortably talk about what they have been through.

And Edward was surprised to discover that he was listening. Before, when Abilene had talked to him, everything had seemed so boring, so pointless. But now, the stories Nellie told struck him as the most important thing in the world and he listened as if his life depended on what she said." (page 69)