“Lightly men talk of saying what they mean. Often when he was teaching me to write in Greek the Fox would say, ‘Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean; that’s the whole art and joy of words.’ A glib saying. When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the centre of your soul for years, which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you’ll not talk about the joy of words. I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?”
-- C. S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces
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This is one of my all-time favorite books. Have you seen the stage play?
I didn't even know it had been dramatized! That sounds like it would be a wonderful play. CS Lewis really is just amazing.
I've seen it performed twice by Lamb's Players, and it was incredible--here's a description. I'm a big Lewis fan, too.