"I recognized the feeling in a passage from [[Gilles Deleuze]] in Negotiations: **We’re riddled with pointless talk, insane quantities of words and images.** Stupidity’s never blind or mute. **So it’s not a problem of getting people to express themselves but of providing little gaps of solitude and silence in which they might eventually find something to say.** Repressive forces don’t stop people expressing themselves but rather force them to express themselves; what a relief to have nothing to say, the right to say nothing, because only then is there a chance of framing the rare, and ever rarer, thing that might be worth saying. He wrote that in 1985, but I could identify with the sentiment in 2016, almost to a painful degree." ([Location 297](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07RHWKD7N&location=297)) --- **Tags** -- [[quotes]], [[not-speaking]], [[attention]] **Source** -- [[20251230081807 - B - How to Do Nothing]]