One Great Sentence

“It’s a little facile, maybe, and certainly hard to implement, but I’d say, as a goal in life, you could do worse than: Try to be kinder.”

By Kari Howard• One Great Sentence• June 7, 2017

Why is it great? It’s graduation season, so it seemed like a perfect time to revisit this beautiful commencement speech that the writer George Saunders gave at Syracuse University four years ago. It may have been the most unlikely … Read more

“He had gone into another room, to where the buffet was, after he had watched the 12 rounds when he was the heavyweight champeen of the world, back in that last indelible summer when America dared yet dream that it could run and hide from the world, when the handsomest boy loved the prettiest girl, when streetcars still clanged and fistfights were fun, and the smoke hung low when Maggie went off to Paradise.”

By Kari Howard• One Great Sentence• May 31, 2017

Frank Deford died this week, and I’m not sure sportswriters will see his like again. The beautiful rhythm of his language was some kind of wonderful. I love this bit from The New York Times obit of him: Ross … Read more

“Did he kill? If he did kill, I would swear that it is with this meticulous, somewhat maniacal, admirably lucid care with which he classifies his notes, drafts his papers. Did he kill? Then it is while whistling a little tune, and wearing an apron for fear of stains.”

By Kari Howard• One Great Sentence• May 24, 2017

Why is it so great? I came across this stunning line (yes, it’s more than one sentence) in a piece in a literary journalism journal about the novelist Colette’s outings as a journalist covering “crime of the century”-type trials. Who knew? … Read more

“This will happen so fast that one night he will be in the backyard, believing it a perfect place, and by the next night he will have changed and the yard as he imagined it will be gone, and this era of his life will be behind him forever.”

By Kari Howard• One Great Sentence• May 17, 2017

This famous piece by Susan Orlean is one of those stories where it’s hard to pick just one great sentence. You find one, and then another, and then another — a rabbit hole of great sentences. But this one … Read more

“There’s no room for hate in ice cream,” Dennis liked to remind himself.

By Kari Howard• One Great Sentence• May 10, 2017

Why is it great? We annotated this wonderful story last year, and the focus of the annotation was the rarity of humor in longform. This line makes me laugh even without the context of the story, which is … Read more

“She was beautiful but when she tasted the water from the glass on her lectern she smiled sadly as if it were bitter for, in spite of her civil zeal, she had a taste for the melancholy – for the smell of orange rinds and wood smoke – that was extraordinary.”

By Kari Howard• One Great Sentence• May 4, 2017

Why is it great? When I moved back to New England last year after nearly a lifetime away, John Cheever’s debut novel about a quirky New England family was the first thing I read. This sentence, near the beginning, captured … Read more

“He sat in an old chair near a particle board pinned with the yellowed obituaries of steelworker friends who died too early, including Robert Plater. 60. Cancer. A paper target practice figure hung next to the obituaries. Its heart had been blown out.”

By Kari Howard• One Great Sentence• April 26, 2017

Why is it great? I promise this is the last you’ll see of Springsteen on this site for the foreseeable future. But I had somehow missed this story by one of my favorite writers (and former co-worker on the … Read more

“Barcantier, of Le Kremlin, who had jumped in the river, tried in vain to throttle, aided by his Great Dane, the meddler who was dragging him out.”

By James Geary• One Great Sentence• April 19, 2017

Why is it great? Félix Fénéon (1861-1944) was a clerk in the French War Office during World War I, a literary editor, art dealer, anarchist and journalist. While working for Le Matin in 1906, he wrote what came to be … Read more

“I go to sleep every night knowing I have the blood of so many on my hands and no amount of soap could ever wash these stains away.”

By Kari Howard• One Great Sentence• April 12, 2017

Why is it great? Chivers just won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing for his magazine profile of Sam Siatta, a Marine suffering from PTSD. How did he make a story that has been told many times before so … Read more

“But then the not-knowing returns, and it keeps him awake at night.”

By Kari Howard• One Great Sentence• April 5, 2017

Why is it great? For the second week in a row, our One Great Sentence comes from a gifted journalist who has just left us. Last week, the writer was Jimmy Breslin, who died after a long and brilliant career; … Read more