This paper aims to develop a comparative study between Maria Velho da Costa’s Maina Mendes and Guimarães Rosa’s “A terceira margem do rio”. In this essay, I seek to observe how the concepts of silence and testimony in both works evoke some questions about the composition of speeches, specially concerning the relationship between language and language suspension, orality and writing, prolongation and rupture, focusing mainly on the theme of family relationships. For this purpose, I will also refer to the work of David Le Breton on the polysemic character of silence, the studies of Tito Cardoso and Cunha on the rhetoric of the unspoken, as well as the concept of hidden dialogue by Mikhail Bakhtin.