"We don't care for your sort."
"Is that so. And how have you classified me?"
"As a coward. A suicide. A man of meager resources."
"I'm nothing of the kind. In the first place, I did not commit suicide." Bart wished he could kick at the invisible wall. "I willed myself away from an imperfect shell. I severed the mind from the body."
"Why?"
"Because I had cancer of the larynx, and I'd never have been able to talk again. I'd be less than a man."
"You are less than a man now." There was a long period of no exchange. Bart decided he had not made himself clear. "I didn't want to live without being able to communicate with other men and women."
"Communicate. Communicate. There are a million ways to communicate. Michelangelo communicated, Bach, Beethoven, yes, Elvis Presley communicates. Hemingway, Martha Graham, actors, dancers, even a baby communicates!"
"But speech ..."
"Speech is the least dependable method of all. Few people can explain their love, their pain, their innermost feelings in words. And often a man speaks his thoughts, and having spoken them, finds he really thinks the opposite. No, this is second-rate expression and my opinion of you has not been altered by your feeble argument."