One Great Sentence

“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

“She is the mother of two fatherless children and she was walking into the history of this country because she was showing everybody who felt old and helpless and without hope that she had this terrible strength that everybody needed so badly.”

By Kari Howard• One Great Sentence• March 29, 2017

Like a lot of people, last week I reread the story that made Jimmy Breslin famous. It has his greatest hallmark: writing about the little guy, in this case Clifton Pollard, who was paid $3.01 an hour to dig the grave … Read more

“Henry Ford believed the soul of a person is located in the last breath and so captured the last breath of his best friend Thomas Edison in a test tube and kept it evermore.”

By Kari Howard• One Great Sentence• March 22, 2017

Why is it great? This line, from the poet Elizabeth Alexander’s beautiful memoir about the death of her husband, knocked me out on a couple levels. First, I had no idea that Henry Ford and Thomas Edison were best friends, … Read more

“This is a love story, and I apologize; it was inadvertent. But I want it clearly understood from the start that I don’t expect it to turn out well.”

By Kari Howard• One Great Sentence• March 15, 2017

Why is it great? Have you ever read a book and found it hard to get over a terrible first line? You want to move on, and the other 100,000 sentences in the book may be just fine, but that … Read more

“Hazel Morse was a large, fair woman of the type that incites some men when they use the word ‘blonde’ to click their tongues and wag their heads roguishly.”

By Kari Howard• One Great Sentence• March 8, 2017

Why is it great? With this opening line to her famous short story, Parker does so many things: She gives us an image of Hazel that’s Kodachrome clear: I can almost hear the old-fashioned pop of the flash. She also establishes Hazel … Read more