One Great Moment

“Sometimes at noon down South on the hottest of days, when everyone is shivering inside their arctic offices, I go outside just to hear the metallic whirring of the cicadas start up in the trees on the edge of the parking lot. Their tymbals pulsate against their abdomens and the thick air reverberates with the loneliest sound in the universe.”

By Julia Shipley• One Great Moment• August 30, 2017

In addition to the music of Blythe’s lush language, I love how he captures this brash paradox–that a chorus can make us feel so lonely. Furthermore I love how, like a quintessential writer, he stations himself on an edge between … Read more

“Take me or leave me; or, as is the usual order of things, both.”

By Kari Howard• One Great Moment• August 23, 2017

Why is it great? Yesterday was Dorothy Parker’s birthday. (She would have been 124, reminding me of her classic line, “Time may be a great healer, but it’s a lousy beautician.”) The line above is one of my favorites, because … Read more

“Even on the most beautiful days in the whole year – the days when summer is changing into autumn – the crickets spread the rumor of sadness and change.”

By Kari Howard• One Great Moment• August 16, 2017

Why is it great? Here in E.B. White’s Maine, August is bittersweet, bringing whispers of summer’s end even at the height of its ripeness. Apples, the fruit of fall, begin to color on gnarled trees. Bright yellow goldenrod sprouts around … Read more

“In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.”

By Kari Howard• One Great Moment• August 9, 2017

Why is it great? First off, the rhythm of the sentence makes me swoon. I keep reading it aloud, to hear how it swirls and swirls like dancers on a ballroom floor before coming to a rest, softly, on the … Read more

“Imagine me; I shall not exist if you do not imagine me; try to discern the doe in me, trembling in the forest of my own iniquity; let’s even smile a little.”

By Kari Howard• One Great Moment• August 2, 2017

Why is it great? Nabokov is masterful here, not just stylistically but emotionally. He interrupts Humbert Humbert’s grotesque pursuit of Lolita by having him address the reader directly with an abject plea for understanding, a jarring moment that makes us … Read more

“Summer was our best season: it was sleeping on the back screened porch in cots, or trying to sleep in the tree house; summer was everything good to eat; it was a thousand colors in a parched landscape.”

By Kari Howard• One Great Moment• July 26, 2017

Why is it great? I love how Lee has written this line: It tumbles out of Scout’s head exactly like the thoughts of a 6-year-old child, all “this and this and this and especially this.” And it also captures the joys … Read more

“And one day he made an error, and then struck out, and it sounded like all of Fenway was booing, and he ran to the bench with his head down, the red rising in his face, the shame in his belly, and the rage. Ted thought: These are the ones who cheered, the fans I waved my cap to? Well, never again.”

By Kari Howard• One Great Moment• July 19, 2017

Why is it great? Yes, it’s more than one sentence. But in this one short stanza, Cramer has captured all the rage and sorrow and loneliness and drive of the legendary Red Sox hitter Ted Williams. This is one of … Read more

“Well I chased him through them county roads / Till a sign said Canadian border five miles from here / I pulled over to the side of the highway and watched his taillights disappear.”

By Kari Howard• One Great Moment• July 12, 2017

Why is it great? This is the first lyric to feature on “One Great Sentence,” and of course it had to be Springsteen. I chose this not because it’s my … Read more

“The fact was it felt good to be angry, to yell and curse, because if she wasn’t angry then she was mostly afraid: of nightmares, of being alone, of the shadows in the church parking lot across the street, of cars backfiring, of the sound of knocking coming now at the door.”

By Kari Howard• One Great Moment• June 28, 2017

Why is it great? This week we’re spotlighting stellar literary journalism about America’s gun violence epidemic, and this stunning story by Eli Saslow takes an intimate, often uncomfortably close look at the life of a shooting victim after all the … Read more

“We cross our bridges as we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and the presumption that once our eyes watered.”

By Kari Howard• One Great Moment• June 21, 2017

Why is it great? Tom Stoppard is one of our greatest wordsmiths, wildly intelligent and witty, while still revealing the pathos of his characters. This line is a perfect example of his genius. It uses a metaphor, a bit of … Read more