Seeing her sitting there unresponsive makes me realize that silence has a sound.

The line frames silence not as an absence but as a palpable presence—something that can press on a room the way noise does. The speaker’s realization comes from witnessing another person’s emotional or physical withdrawal (“sitting there unresponsive”), suggesting grief, shock, illness, or estrangement. In that moment, silence becomes communicative: it carries tension, refusal, helplessness, or sorrow, and it forces the observer to confront what cannot be said aloud. The quote’s power lies in its sensory paradox—giving “sound” to silence—to convey how human relationships are shaped as much by what is withheld as by what is spoken.