"I believe, at a very fundamental level, that words are electrical. The generation of words is an expression of electrical energy. The reason storytelling engages us perhaps more fully than other kinds of communication is because the words in a story can mean in different ways. They contain their opposites. In that scene—‘Swearengen!’ ‘Cocksucker!’—we understand how provisional the meaning of a word is and that its fundamental meaning is contingent upon the energy with which it’s endowed by the speaker. Energy is a gossamer and intangible and variable commodity, and words in a story are more clearly contingent and variable than words in a proof. The highest form of storytelling, it seems to me, is mathematics—where literally the signs contain within themselves the most violent and basic form of energy. Einstein understood that if he was able to sign correctly he would experience the secret of energy. He was telling himself a story with those signs, and he said, ‘All I want to understand is the mind of God.’ Now, I don’t want to understand it; I want to testify to it. I believe that we are all literally part of the mind of God and that our sense of ourselves as separate is an illusion. And therefore when we communicate with each other as a function of an exchange of energy we understand not because of the inherent content of the words but because of how that energy flows. So Dority says, ‘I can’t understand you, Wu. Fucking language. I just can’t do it.’ And what he’s saying is ‘I’m trying. I’m trying.’ And then they work something out."