The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar, and familiar things new.

Two moves account for most writing and teaching that lands. The first takes something strange and makes it feel ordinary. The second takes something so ordinary that nobody looks at it any more and makes it visible again. Both are acts of attention rather than cleverness, and most people who hold your interest are doing one or the other.

When you next have to explain something difficult, connect it to a thing the person already handles every day. And when you want somebody to care about something they have stopped seeing, describe it slowly and in detail, as if you had just come across it.