"Every act of communication is an act of tremendous courage in which we give ourselves over to two parallel possibilities: the possibility of planting into another mind a seed sprouted in ours and watching it blossom into a breathtaking flower of mutual understanding; and the possibility of being wholly misunderstood, reduced to a withering weed. Candor and clarity go a long way in fertilizing the soil, but in the end there is always a degree of unpredictability in the climate of communication — even the warmest intention can be met with frost. Yet something impels us to hold these possibilities in both hands and go on surrendering to the beauty and terror of conversation, that ancient and abiding human gift. And the most magical thing, the most sacred thing, is that whichever the outcome, we end up having transformed one another in this vulnerable-making process of speaking and listening."
Maria Popova, of Brain Pickings, describing what Ursula K. Le Guin explores in a magnificent piece titled "Telling Is Listening" found in The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination (public library).http://mailchi.mp/brainpickings/tolstoy-on-love-ursula-k-le-guin-on-the-magic-of-real-human-communication-kafka-on-music-and-why-we-make-art
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