penned in this prison cell during the months before his execution. These are his ethical essays, and much of their focus is on words. Bonhoeffer is concerned about what we say: phrases that after a time begin to sound true, but neither truly engage reality nor adopt the viewpoint of another person. His deepest social critique concerns language—not merely the overwhelming quantity of words—but especially their insubstantial quality that obscures honest thought and produces lies that enable suffering: