"Listen. What silence. Is it always as silent?"
Anna says this while Deeley pours brandy for everyone. The silence has to do with the actual lack of sound in the home and surrounding community, but also the silence between the characters that cannot be filled as easily.
"Do men ripple too?"
Deeley asks this of Anna while she describes Kate's ability to discern the depth of a man just like she could discern the depth of a river by the ripples that come up on the surface.
"When I brought him into the room your body of course had gone. What a relief it was to have a different body in my room, a male body behaving quite differently, doing all those things they do and which they think are good, like sitting with one leg over the arm of the armchair."
Kate says this to Anna as she is describing having moved Anna's dead body out of her room and having it filled by her husband, Deeley's just before she covers his face with dirt just like Anna's. The statement evokes an understanding of what seems to be proper in society, things that people do to appear appropriate. All of this before Kate breaks the proper behavior with attempting to press dirt into his face.
