Sentences That Keep

This week NPR ran a story about how The American Scholar magazine released its list of the top 10 best written sentences in the English language, in fiction and non-fiction.

It came about because staff members at American Scholar found themselves discussing what makes an exquisite sentence as they gathered at the water cooler, perhaps along with talk about their busted NCAA brackets.

They decided to make a best sentences list and started thinking about lines that stopped them in their tracks when they were younger, lines that were artfully crafted but also made a beeline for their hearts. They went in search of gems, sentences so beautifully crafted they could make a reader see something more clearly or in an entirely new way, lines with an interior rhythm, parallel structure or simply graceful gathering of words.

Some of the writers who made the list: Truman Capote, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Joan Didion and Toni Morrison.

What a lovely thing to collect. I like picturing pretty or startlingly gritty sentences pinned to a string and you could pluck one each morning like fresh and fragrant clothes just off the line, taking the wind and the air, a bit of the world and a character with you as you walked off into your day.

Hundreds of comments poured in; people offered sentences they felt were best, the lines that stayed. I started to think of so many:

That moment after Scout walks Boo Radley home near the end of To Kill a Mockingbird and she sees the town through his eyes and understands all he has done for her.

“Neighbors bring food with death and flowers with sickness and little things in between. Boo was our neighbor. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a pair of good-luck pennies, and our lives."

I thought of Toni Morrison too, but of lines from Beloved.

“She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order."

Or
"So you protected yourself and loved small. Picked the tiniest stars out of the sky."

It's hard to pare a favorite passage down to just one sentence, as so many lovely lines live around them. In Sandra Cisneros' House on Mango Street, the main character, a young girl named Esperanza, takes solace in the trees that insist, that grow out of the concrete, trees with secret strength that "keep and keep."

Esperanza says, "When I am too sad and too skinny to keep keeping, when I am a tiny thing against too many bricks, then it is I look at the trees."

http://www.npr.org/2014/03/26/294823375/it-was-the-best-of-sentences