Nevertheless, small corrections can be made by slightly gimballing the main engines so that they swivel, by placing deflective surfaces called vanes within the rocket exhaust, or, in some instances, by fitting small rocket engines known as thrust-vector motors or thrusters.
If he actually seeks her opinion about something, she should, in the interests of allowing his natural dominance to develop, respond with a deflective "Whatever you think" or a chirpy "That's a good question!" "The Surrendered Wife" (Simon & Schuster; $13) is dazzlingly reductive: in less than three hundred pages, Doyle provides an instruction manual for a new generation of Stepford wives.
Their exchange illustrates the terse, deflective, somewhat lobotomized quality of the novel's dialogue: "I want a haircut".
By the time "an infinitely deflective Englishman" arrives, perhaps in Roxanne's place, who calls himself Escovil and purports to be a travel writer at a time when carefree travel is a thing of the past, Zannis has become more watchful.
He calls this band Inside Straight, applying the phrase as a badge of intent and maybe a deflective maneuver: He'll brand this music as conventional before you ever have the chance.
And — this was the hardest question of all — what lay beneath their default social style, an indecipherable mille-feuille of politeness, awkwardness, embarrassment, irony, self-deprecation, arrogance, defensiveness and deflective humor?
But there was an empty stridency behind the quirks, the deflective signs of a crutch.
His strategy is deflective, and the unique insight offered by his genius is that often, the best way to neutralize your opponents is to refuse to confront them head-on: he meets power with evasion, and gains strength even as he runs away.
As a coda, another of his deflective self-portraits is on show at Dulwich Picture Gallery: an enormous capital letter I cast in steel.
Bourdouxhe said the only thing she and Marie had in common was that they were both married women, but I take this as a deflective gesture, for Marie is an incarnation of the novelist's ability to notice things.
But was Vieira in deflective rather than reflective spirit?
