Thomas Mann comes close to expressing what I'm trying to say to you with his carefully worded sentence about the "frightfully radical duality" between the brain and the beast in man-in all of us.
He had a primly pointed jaw, a primly straight nose, and a prim manner of speaking that was so correct, so gentlemanly, that he seemed a comic antique.
To have a conversation with Chiang, I'm finding, is to speak with a man who weighs every word as carefully as a jeweler, and who isn't afraid to pause until he's found the right one.
At chapel, Mr. Byden spoke about the importance of humility, and I scrutinized his expression for a sign that there would be no classes. He did not give one.