It is true that the raven croaks, the dog barks, and the lion roars. But animal voices are only chinks in the silence. It is as though the animal were trying to tear open the silence with the force of its own body.

'A dog barks today exactly as it barked at the beginning of Creation', says Jacob Grimm. That is why the barking of dogs is so desperate, for it is the vain effort, since the beginning of the creation until the present day, to split the silence open, and this attempt to break the silence of creation is always a moving thing to man.

Picard, The World of Silence