Why do you keep quiet?

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To keep myself out of trouble. When I'm at work, I don't talk, unless I'm spoken to. That way, I don't say the wrong thing.

I keep trying to live by this but I always fail. I think if I would just never talk it could eliminate 80% of the problems in my life.

The main reason is I don't always know what to say and my mind goes blank in a lot of conversations with not good friends/people I don't know that much. And that causes social anxiety so if I do have something to say it doesn't come out unless I force it.
Another reason is if I'm not really interested in what they're talking about I won't have anything to add to the discussion, if people are talking about the latest horror film or something I don't really care about joining in because it's not something I'm interested in.
Another reason is at college I don't have any proper friends just acquaitences and a lot of the things I say I wouldn't say to them.
Also I'm often just lost in my own thoughts anyway and I'm not really there I'm miles away.

From the overabundance of the heart the mouth speaks.

I don't think you can teach someone to become a more quiet person. It depends on the situation but some people are quiet and some are loud. I've been quiet all my life, so it's easier to go back if I think I'm saying too much. I can be both quiet and loud, though only loud around certain people.

In person I'm pretty quiet, but not overly so. I was so quiet when I was little that people asked me if I could talk and I would just say "talk?". Usually I don't talk much to people because I'm uninterested. If I do talk to someone I'm not close to too much I can get a sick feeling and need to get away from them (even if they're a nice person). At work people talk about all kinds of things I could add to, but I just think it and it doesn't come out of my mouth. They chatter incessantly and it makes me crazy.

I doubt that.
Not talking brings with it problems of its own.
People want to connect (for some reason) and if you do not talk the easiest way it eliminated and they get pissed off.

I don't usually know what to say and if I do know what to say, I am affraid I will come across as weird.

I do it not to upset or hurt anyone. I am silent or get quiet when I'm ill and feeling bad physically, I'm overwhelmed and I need time to myself to process/think and when I'm upset emotionally about something.

I keep quiet so the people around me do, just in case they say something I don't like.

I am also quiet when around people I don't know. I'm quiet when I'm in a strange environment and situations too.

I don't talk because speech is almost totally disconnected from my thoughts, and because most of the time even the disconnected speech isn't possible. I can either be very quiet or very chattery using typing though which is what I use to communicate in person.

During the times when speech happens (but in a way that has nothing to do with my thoughts) I deliberately suppress it where possible because it would just confuse people. Most of it is either repetitions of things I have read or heard, literal reading of something in front of me (even if I have no conscious awareness of it), or these weird strings of words that are like.... "bister bister baster b*tch" to pick one of the more amusing ones, or just repetition of a single word with different inflection, vowel sounds, stress, or accent. Or a variety of non-word sounds (squealing, meowing, staccato yelling, etc.) The meowing happens in front of other people sometimes...well so does most of it, I just try to keep it to myself because it's just weird stuff.

(I've noticed sometimes the weird stuff has relevance to the situation, but it's... tangential at best and I can't control for obscenity or lack thereof.)

Because I don't want to speak.I'm always thinking, and I prefer thinking to speaking.

Me, I go by the saying, better to be a fool and quiet than open your mouth and remove all doubt

because speech dosent keep up with the speed of thought -

by the time i've thought about what someone said, figured out some words that explain the pictures of thoughts a little bit, run the thought by again to check i didnt miss anything important and rehearsed the answer to see how it sounds... the conversation has long moved on... and i'm faced with missing the next bit again while i try to figure words for explaining pictures of my thoughts on the last bit

I do speak when i have to but its either s l o w l y and hal tin gly or so fst my tng gts tngld - i always feel like i've had the conversation about 50 times but the other person only seems to have had it once

My whole life I've been very, very quiet. Reasons why:

1. Don't know how to say what I feel. Don't seem to be able to explain things to others in a way they can understand.
2. Found that people don't react to what I say the way I believe they will. I can only handle getting laughed at/yelled at so many times before I go silent for a day or two.
3. Just can't think of anything to say, or how to respond.
4. Confused into speechlessness.