This is a book about prayer, Prayer, it argues, is the primary speech to which the title refers.'Prayer is that primordial discourse in which we assert, however clumsily or eloquently, our own being. If we are ever honest with ourselves, it is here that we must be, though we are often not sure about who it is that we are talking to or how well we are talking or that we are even talking Sometimes the honesty comes because we are confident that nobody can overhear us, not the God in whom we have such shaky faith or no faith at all, not anybody we know, perhaps not even ourselves as we grunt or moan or shout or sob our prayers. Sometimes the honesty comes because we do not know who it is that is listening, because we feel sure that there is a listener somewhere in us or outside us, because we know from experience that what we have said in prayer, or not quite said but somehow expressed, has been heard'.