Intellect burns through pale indoor skin, like a torch behind a paper screen. Concentration has furrowed your brow, the effort of containing multiple ironies. When you practiced as a lawyer, you used to let your gown trail off one shoulder; admirers copied you, making carelessness a cult. You’ve not shaved to meet the painter. No time, and you’d like to be thought above such niceties; you’re not vain, unless such nonchalance is a vanity in itself. Everything is in your lineaments—past and future—a whole eloquent biography.

Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self-…, loc. 1151