Hi there!
Welcome to another month and another round of IWSG posts. As we dive into NaNo or dive into our writing for the month, I thought I'd post some inspiring sentences.
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I like to read A LOT and I like to consider the way some of the greats write in the hope that some of the magic will rub off on my writing. Here are some of the ten best sentences in fiction according to this article I came across online.
I think these sentences are pretty awesome, but also demonstrate how times/tastes change. No doubt some of you won't like these examples. Flick through and let me know which one you like best...or perhaps post your favourite sentence from your current WIP or a much-loved book.
Here we go....
Its
vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once
pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a
transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of
this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood
nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something
commensurate to his capacity for wonder.
—F. Scott
Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
I go to
encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the
smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.
—James
Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
This
private estate was far enough away from the explosion so that its bamboos,
pines, laurel, and maples were still alive, and the green place invited
refugees—partly because they believed that if the Americans came back, they
would bomb only buildings; partly because the foliage seemed a center of
coolness and life, and the estate’s exquisitely precise rock gardens, with
their quiet pools and arching bridges, were very Japanese, normal, secure; and
also partly (according to some who were there) because of an irresistible,
atavistic urge to hide under leaves.
—John
Hersey, Hiroshima
It was a
fine cry—loud and long—but it had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and
circles of sorrow.
—Toni
Morrison, Sula
For what
do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors, and laugh at them in our turn?
—Jane
Austen, Pride and Prejudice
It was
the United States of America in the cold late spring of 1967, and the market
was steady and the G.N.P. high and a great many articulate people seemed to
have a sense of high social purpose and it might have been a spring of brave
hopes and national promise, but it was not, and more and more people had the
uneasy apprehension that it was not.
—Joan
Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Anger was
washed away in the river along with any obligation.
—Ernest
Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
There are
many pleasant fictions of the law in constant operation, but there is not one
so pleasant or practically humorous as that which supposes every man to be of
equal value in its impartial eye, and the benefits of all laws to be equally
attainable by all men, without the smallest reference to the furniture of their
pockets.
—Charles
Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby
In many
ways he was like America itself, big and strong, full of good intentions, a
roll of fat jiggling at his belly, slow of foot but always plodding along,
always there when you needed him, a believer in the virtues of simplicity and
directness and hard labor.
—Tim
O’Brien, The Things They Carried
There is
nothing more atrociously cruel than an adored child.
—Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
And a
bonus:
Like the
waters of the river, like the motorists on the highway, and like the yellow
trains streaking down the Santa Fe tracks, drama, in the shape of exceptional
happenings, had never stopped there.
—Truman
Capote, In Cold Blood
fabcddaaaaaaaaaaaaaah
- Do you have a favourite sentence from the above list?
- What is your favourite sentence in your WIP or another book?
