“Lovers have a language that can be lost--how to speak, how to touch, when to try.”

“After all, when you come right down to it, how many people speak the same language even when they speak the same language?”

“My mother and Joe have a lovers' shorthand, an economy of gestures that comes when you are close enough to someone to speak their language. I wonder if my mother and father ever had that, or if my mother was always just trying to decipher him.”

“When I am writing, I am trying to find out who I am, who we are, what we're capable of, how we feel, how we lose and stand up, and go on from darkness into darkness. I'm trying for that. But I'm also trying for the language. I'm trying to see how it can really sound. I really love language. I love it for wate it does for us, how it allows us to explain the pain and the glory, the nuances and delicacies of our existence. And then it allows us to laugh, allows us to show wit. Real wit is shown in language. We need language.”

“And how does God speak to you?""In the language of everything that is beautiful.”

“But I don't know how to speak the language of impossible dreams en français.”