I'm well aware that I have been described in some quarters as being 'enigmatic, taciturn, prickly, explosive and forbidding'. Well, I have my moods like anyone else; I won't deny it.

The man who is gloomy, taciturn and lives in a world of doubt seldom achieves more than a bare living. There have been a few who have groaned their way through to a competence, but in proportion to that overwhelming number of souls who carry cheer through life, they are as nothing - mere drops in the bucket.

My father wasn't just taciturn - it was like he didn't want to be heard.

In the 1880s, a weedy Easterner named Owen Wister had something like a nervous breakdown. Wyoming, with its wide-open spaces and healthy pursuits, was prescribed as a cure. Wister was immediately smitten by the taciturn cowboys and the rules imposed upon them by the cattle barons.

The dead keep their secrets, and in a while we shall be as wise as they - and as taciturn.

I'm not taciturn and stoic.

When I was 14 I was really taciturn - I hardly said a word - but then I auditioned for Shylock. With Shakespeare's words in my mouth I suddenly felt I had a lot to say.

In Kansas, people are reserved, quiet, taciturn.

People in the North are really taciturn and reticent, and they don't really like to talk about the past.

Nature is garrulous to the point of confusion, let the artist be truly taciturn.