Sentence structure

“Before the aurora borealis appears, the sensitive needles of compasses all over the world are restless for hours, agitating on their pins in airplanes and ships, trembling in desk drawers, in attics, in boxes on shelves.”

By Roy Peter Clark• One Great Moment• November 15, 2017

Why is it great? I admire the way Dillard turns a piece of natural science into a narrative of anticipation during which no human being makes an entrance.  The aurora borealis, better known as the northern lights, is a spectacular … Read more

“Then away out in the woods I heard that kind of a sound that a ghost makes when it wants to tell about something that’s on its mind and can’t make itself understood, and so can’t rest easy in its grave, and has to go about that way every night grieving.”

By Kari Howard• One Great Moment• October 30, 2017

Why is it great? For Halloween, I decided to use this wonderfully spooky line from Mark Twain (who in his writing and his speaking was a true master of the Great Sentence). Starting with the rhythm of “away out in … Read more

“There was a kind of autumnal stain in the air that reminded me of the smell of leather work gloves, a high-school locker room at homecoming, the inside of an ancient canvas tent.”

By Kari Howard• One Great Moment• October 18, 2017

Why is it great? Chabon has tapped into that greatest of sensory effects: the ability of smells to take you back to a place, a moment, a memory. The last one, in particular, works its magic on me. The mildewy … Read more

“We all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call; no way out, just the upstairs window to look out of while the fire burns the house down with us trapped, locked in it.”

By Kari Howard• One Great Moment• October 4, 2017

Why is it great? This sentence is one of the most vivid metaphors I’ve ever read. It captures the helplessness of a life of desperation, where you can’t even jump from the window, just stare out of it, seeing the … Read more

“Something in the world links faces and leaves and rivers and woods and wind together and makes them a string of medallions with all our faces on them, worn forever round our necks, kin.”

By Julia Shipley• One Great Moment• September 27, 2017

Why is it great? Written long before every person carried a camera, before Facebook, back when “streaming” was just what water did as it coursed through its bed, Goyen, raised in a small town in East Texas, believed we could … Read more

For film week, home movies and drive-ins (and David Foster Wallace on David Lynch)

By Kari Howard• Narrative News• September 22, 2017

It was a lot of fun focusing on movies this week on Storyboard. Each day I tweeted out some of the best-written lines in filmdom — including the best one-word line ever: “Rosebud.” Here on the site, we explored the … Read more

“I know all about reporters, Walter. A lot of daffy buttinskis running around without a nickel in their pockets and for what? So a million hired girls and motormen’s wives’ll know what’s going on.”

By Kari Howard• One Great Moment• September 20, 2017

Why is it great? Yes, it’s three sentences. But it’s one brilliant summation of journalists, from the best-written movie about journalists of all time. God, the banter in the screenplay! I love how this line has hilarious putdowns like “daffy … Read more

“If the history of the earth’s tides should one day be written by some observer of the universe, it would no doubt be said that they reached their greatest grandeur and power in the younger days of Earth, and that they slowly grew feebler and less imposing until one day they ceased to be.”

By Roy Peter Clark• One Great Moment• September 13, 2017

Why is it great? Few authors have written as magnificently about nature as Rachel Carson, and this sentence is a good example.  Its strength is not in form but content.  It revealed to me something I did not know — … Read more

“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