Conversation (n.) is how spouses enrich each other: what moves obscurely in her, he says as well as he can; she marvels it was just what she meant and appropriates it — and then he marvels that his words have acquired a charm that is no longer his.
A Conversation (n.) shows you best what is in the other man if you master the art of making yourself a cipher.
A Conversation (n.) is not saying a great deal about everything; its secret is appropriation — which is why the Sophists could talk but not converse.
Conversation (n.) can hold a whole excited company for an hour of near passion and turn out, when a calm stranger asks what it is about, to be about a trifle that hardly bears putting into words.
Conversation (n.) can divide two men more than a foreign tongue, when one speaks only of God's kingdom and the other only of livelihood, wife and children and the town's news.
Conversation (n.) makes it easy to forget that we are before God, between two people, let alone ten; the lily does not converse, and by its silence reminds you.