Gass argued that we are desperately unskilled at the most important conversation we will ever have — the one with ourselves. 'We have excellent languages for the secrets of nature. Wave packets, black holes, and skeins of genes: we can write precisely and consequentially of these,' he observed, 'but can we talk even of trifles: for instance, of the way a look sometimes crosses a face like the leap of a frog?' The solution required what he called 'endless rehearsals — rehearsals in which we revise.' Many people, he noted, considered such revision of the inner life to be hypocritical, but Gass insisted it was the opposite: 'to think how to express some passion properly is the only way to be possessed by it, for unformed feelings lack impact, just as unfelt ideas lose weight.' The closing image was both beautiful and unsettling: 'So walk around unrewritten, if you like. Live on broken phrases and syllable gristle. No one will suspect … until you speak.'