Talk is only a pretext for other, subtler forms of communication. When the latter are inoperative speech becomes dead. When two people are intent upon communication with one another it doesn't matter in the least how bewildering the talk becomes. People who insist upon clarity and logic often fail in making themselves understood. They are always searching for a more perfect transmitter, deluded by the supposition that the mind is the only instrument for the exchange of thought. When one really begins to talk, one delivers himself. Words are thrown about recklessly, not counted like pennies. One doesn't care about grammatical or factual errors, contradictions, lies and so on. One talks. If you are talking to some one who knows how to listen he understands perfectly, even though the words make no sense. When this kind of talk gets underway, a marriage takes places, no matter whether you are talking to a man or a woman. Men talking with other men have as much need of this sort of marriage as women talking with other women have. Married couples seldom enjoy this kind of talk, for reasons which are only too obvious.
Talk, real talk, it seems to me, is one of the most expressive manifestations of man's hunger for unlimited marriage. Sensitive people, people who feel, want to unite in some deeper, subtler, more durable fashion than is permitted by custom and convention. I mean in ways beyond the dream of social and political Utopists. The brotherhood of man, should it ever come about, is only the kindergartner stage in the drama of human relationships. When man begins to permit himself full expression, when he can express himself without fear of ridicule, ostracism or persecution, the first thing he will do will be to pour out his love. In the story of human love we are still at the first chapter. Even there, even in the realm of the purely personal, it is a pretty shoddy account. Have we more than a dozen heroes and heroines of love to hold up as examples?I doubt if we have even as many great lovers as we have illustrious saints. We have scholars galore, and kings and emperors, and statesmen and military leaders, and artists in profusion, and inventors, discoverers, explorers - but where are the great lovers?
[...]
{...} knowledge divorced from actions leads to sterility.
- henry miller, sexus, 404-405
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Well, i'm not sure.. not anymore, not right now. Well, right now, it can be argued that a critic is not an artist, though it can be.
Conversation is an art like any other.
Conversation is an art... like any other.
It's elements as much a tool as the italics button on your word processor.
But i ought not to stress this point any further.
What I mean to say is that appreciating the criticism of conversation for it's recognising its subject is not reason to think ourselves conversationiscians (artists of conversation), or even, for that matter, conversation connoisseurs. Don't forget.

But a beautiful thing it is.. and a beautiful things they are those who converse.