I'm late to the game, here, and everything that's been said above me is great, so I'll just share a quick anecdote.

I was about 10 or so, on a family vacation with my extended family, and happened to end up watching meaningless TV with my uncle in a hotel room. He was editing a book he was writing at the time, so we weren't talking much, but I think he muted the TV or something and I probably asked him why he didn't want to watch whatever it was. I was so young.

He looked up and basically said that silence and quiet played an extremely important role in his life. He said he preferred silence to noise, almost every time. This was unfathomable to me as a rambunctious kid. It literally changed how I thought about the noises and inputs around me. The reason this has stuck with me is that my uncle was a really philosophical, wise person, and those happened to be the last meaningful words he said to me, because he died of a brain tumor later that year. But the message has stayed with me, and I'll never forget that conversation. I didn't know him well, because he lived across the country, but I'll never forget. Silence is powerful.