From the Bookshelf of The Roundtable…

"As they part, both men reflect upon all that might have been said in this recent conversation and yet was not said; and this knowledge of what so often exists in the silences between words both haunts them and makes them marvel at the teasing complexity of all human discourse."

"He did not master the art of walking until the age of seven. Though now, at thirty, he holds himself graciously, there is in his walk some memory of those labours and humiliations of his childhood, a kind of hesitancy that is not quite a limp but more a visible disinclination to put one foot in front of the other.

At the window, he does not move and he does not speak. The palace courtiers know better than to interrupt him when his back is so resolutely turned upon the room. They know that this condition of stillness and silence is consoling to his spirit. For just as walking remains uncomfortable to him, so expressing himself in plain words is very hard for him. It isn't that he does not know, in his head, what he wishes to say; it is simply that what he wishes to say is not what he is able to utter. He can talk to himself with absolute clarity and eloquence. And as with himself, so with God, whom he imagines as a near relation, privy to all the quirks and habits of his mind. But to express himself to his subjects - this is arduous. Sometimes, he will even stammer."