'knocking so ineffectively at the doors of the palace'

He capped the pen. It was a service someone had to perform, he felt. A translation service. What was all this, but a modern tower of Babel? Here was someone speaking nothing but dance, and someone else speaking paint, and someone speaking poetry, and someone speaking music. And what were they trying to express, but the inexpressible? If there existed words, regular words, to say what they were aiming at, then why would they even need to do what they did? Why were they all living here, knocking so ineffectively at the doors of the palace? The ink was insufficient as anything else, but perhaps it was a start. If he'd been a sculptor, he'd have sculpted it for them: Look! There! Love.

—Rebecca Makkai, The Hundred-Year House (2014)