Ineffability Quotes

“The true life is not reducible to words spoken or written, not by anyone, ever.”
― Don DeLillo, Point Omega

“Robert Frost didn’t like to explain his poems—and for good reason: to explain a poem is to suck the air from its lungs. This does not mean, however, that poets shouldn’t talk about their poetry, or that one shouldn’t ask questions about it. Rather, it suggests that any discussion of poetry should celebrate its ultimate ineffability and in so doing lead one to further inquiry. I think of that wonderful scene from Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, where Mosche the Beadle of the local synagogue, in dialogue with the young, precocious author, explains: “Every question possesses a power that does not lie in the answer.”
― Tony Leuzzi, Passwords Primeval: 20 American Poets in their Own Words

“It will seem to many persons very inconsistent with their ideas of the dignity of a spirit that they should appear and act in the manner I have described, and shall describe further; and I have heard it objected that we cannot suppose God would permit the dead to return merely to frighten the living, and that it is showing Him little reverence to imagine He would suffer them to come on such trifling errands, or demean themselves in so undignified a fashion. But God permits men of all degrees of wickedness, and of every kind of absurdity, to exist, and to harass and disturb the earth, whilst they expose themselves to its obloquy or its ridicule.”
― Catherine Crowe, The Night Side of Nature

“But you could never say it all and you could never say it enough.”
― Liane Moriarty, Here One Moment

“It seems to me that the pleasure one feels in a work of art is just one thing that one does not have to explain.”
― Willa Cather, The Selected Letters

“His gaze is opaque, as though behind the impossibility of uttering words madness lurks.”
― Agustina Bazterrica, Tender Is the Flesh

“When words fail, then real language arrives, that rare guest.”
― Carolyn Chun, How to Break Article Noun

“We talk too much," he said with unwonted seriousness. "Clever talk is of no value whatsoever. One merely gets further and further away from oneself and that is a crime. One should be able to crawl right into oneself like a tortoise.”
― Hermann Hesse, Demian: Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend