Gold

Then I ask, When a master feels good, is it because something in him works more easily?

My master nods and says, Cal, you are smarter than you look

That one—that’s the real award. This one”—he raised his own trophy a little—“this is just because I’m not dead yet.”

But even when he was (in my opinion) wrong, he was never wrong for no reason. Everything was analyzed, its causes and ramifications imagined or observed, and alternatives considered.

But the purest, clearest, most fluid, most effective writer of the American Plain Style, ever, was the man whose stories and essays you now hold in your hand: Isaac Asimov.

Where the European style is designed to persuade the reader that the writer is very talented, the American style is designed to persuade the reader that the ideas being explained or tale being told are true. The goal of the one is awe; the goal of the other is understanding

Because there is great art in seeming artless; one must grind the lens very smooth indeed to make it perfectly clear.

Kid Brother
It was a great shock to