When I was younger, I couldn't quite put my finger on it: Was it the familiarity, the well-worn grooves it has worn into our tongues over church potlucks, family dinners, backyard barbecues, and hiking picnics?
The cycle of protest and crackdown, by then five months long, now seven, had worn into a groove of tension, an exhausted state of adrenaline and fear.
By this point in his career, Mr. De Niro's face has hardened into a badge; his snarl has worn into a perpetual grimace.
John William King had shed the bulletproof vest he had worn into the county courthouse today and had on a button-down shirt, untucked, its sleeves covering his racist tattoos, even the Woody Woodpecker in a Ku Klux Klan cap.
It features the veteran folksinger and her famed voice, which age has worn into a more comfortable thing, in collaboration with Steve Earle, who produced the album and contributed three songs.
As afternoon had worn into evening, it had been possible to detect in the theatre's echoey backstage passageways a low-voltage hum of anxiety among the band and the crew, twinned with a murmuring concern that, until Wonder arrived, this was a party without a host.
The eye sockets had worn into dark holes, and the face, head, and neck were speckled with pockmarks.
Because my wife and I so repeatedly read these favorite picture books aloud — comically, exhaustedly, occasionally inebriatedly — to our children, their words and images have worn grooves into our minds.
