It is only the things we don't understand that have any meaning. Man woke up in a world he did not understand, and that is why he tries to interpret it.

There were not words enough in the English language, nor in any language, to make his attitude and conduct intelligible to them.

She had understood all that he had said, with no way of knowing what he meant. It was as though he himself existed here in this town in this state in translation, ambiguous, slightly wrong, too highly colored or wrongly nuanced. Within him was the original, which no one could read.

Words, he decided, were inadequate at best, impossible at worst. They meant too many things. Or they meant nothing at all.

"When a man says "I know what I mean, but I can't express it," he generally does not know what he means — for there can be no knowledge without words; there can only be feelings."

No one can understand himself, for to do that he would have to get outside himself; the subject of the knowing and willing activity would have to become its own object.

Yet, he knew that he did not understand anything about the place or its people or its problems.

He had dabbled in a thing which he had not understood. And had, furthermore, committed that greater sin of thinking that he did understand. And the fact of the matter was that he had just barely understood enough to make the concept work, but had not understood enough to be aware of its consequences.

He doesn't know what he means, and doesn't know he doesn't know.

It was as if he had come to mistrust words somehow. Words, and the sentiments words carried.

He lived year after year. He attended only to himself and to God and this picture-but he did not understand himself.

No one could have fathomed what a life he'd led, for it was chiefly a life lived in his mind.

I cannot explain my plays. Each must find out for himself what is meant

Words were shapes and sounds to him. He saw them, as if he were listening to an unknown language, in shapes.