"How tragic it is that they
who have nothing to express are continually expressing themselves,
like nervous gunners, firing burst after burst of ammunition
into the dark, where there is no enemy. The reason for their
talk is: death. Death is the enemy who seems to confront them
at every moment in the deep darkness and silence of their own
being. So they keep shouting at death. They confound their lives
with noise. They stun their own ears with meaningless words,
never discovering that their hearts are rooted in a silence that
is not death but life. They chatter themselves to death, fearing
life as if it were death."
Thomas Merton in No Man Is
An Island