silence is the thing that eats you · S4
clichés are (a) soothing, and (b) remind you of common sense, and (c) license the universal assent that drowns out silence; and (4) silence is deadly, pure Spider-food, if you've got the Disease.
Context
The program's banal talk is defended by Gately not for its content but for its noise: the shared assent of a roomful of people saying the same worn things exists to drown out silence, because in the silence a person alone with his own head does not survive, the quiet being exactly what the disease feeds on. Connection here is not warmth or understanding but a wall of collective sound thrown up against the deadly solitude of the sealed self; the group talks so that no one is left alone in the room of his skull.