But in the words of the historian Arthur Schlesinger, Sorensen's friend and fellow Camelot insider, Kennedy and his indispensable aide "shared so much – the same quick tempo, detached intelligence, deflationary wit, realistic judgment, candour in speech, coolness in crisis – that when it came to policy and speeches, they operated nearly as one".
González's voice never wastes emotion either: his detached delivery of words like "You left a blood stain on the ground" insists that you bring your own drama to bear on it.
But I was also drawn into the amazing creation stories: the desert pilgrims Abraham and Sarah, Noah's ark, faithful Moses and Egypt's nefarious Pharaoh, young David slaying evil Goliath and (one of my favorites) lone Daniel in the lions' den, with a detached hand writing words upon a wall -- cool!
For politicians and those shaping the media to still be using the word represented a uniquely detached strain of snobbery, a semantic subjugation of millions of working class people.
He repeats words (pay attention to "island" and "detached"), making them signposts to guide audiences toward his conclusion.
These distinctive dynamics are recognisable from Aridjis's much-admired first novel, Book of Clouds, in which a detached young woman spends her time in Berlin typing out someone else's words about the haunted city.
In other words, even as Mr. Mungiu maintains a detached, objective point of view, allowing the details of the story to speak for themselves, he also allows you to glimpse the complex and volatile inner lives of his characters.
If all this sounds a little detached it is because 10 years later I still have no words to describe the total bewilderment, the depth of sorrow and the intensity of loss that I experienced during those days.
When at last Claire allows herself to relive the Valentine's party, she tracks Jay's movements through the crowd from moment to moment, remembering his words (minimal), his attitude toward her (friendly, detached, tolerant), the exact look of the sky when he parted those black drapes and slipped behind them.
With seven short phrases and 26 one-syllable and two-syllable words, it establishes the intimate yet paradoxically detached mood that completely implies the way the rest of the story will play out.
