Seattle Zack
Count each one
- Joined
- Aug 29, 2003
- Posts
- 1,128
The October Esquire celebrates their 70th anniversary. It's an outstanding issue all around -- highly recommended -- but one of the features they did is the "70 Greatest Sentences" to ever grace the pages of their magazine. Don't have space to list them all ... but is this some great writing or what:
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Now he would never write the things that he had saved to write until he knew enough to write them well.
--Ernest Hemmingway, "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," 1936
So deeply imbedded was she in my consciousness that for the first few years of school I believed that each of my teachers was actually my mother in disguise.
--Phillip Roth, "A Jewish Patient Begins His Analysis," 1967
I shall sit at the calcified knobs that once were his knees and summon the courage to ask of Zim the question burning in my soul: Why does Joe Torre wear a wristwatch in the dugout?
--Scott Raab, "Zimmer," 2001
Commonsense has trampled down many a gentle genius whose eyes had delighted in a too early moonbeam of some too early truth; commonsense has back-kicked dirt at the lovliest of queer paintings because a blue tree seemed madness to its well-meaning hoof; commonsense has prompted ugly but frail nations to crush their fair but frail neighbors the moment a gap in history offered a chance that it would have been ridiculous not to exploit.
--Vladimir Nabokov, "How to Read, How to Write," 1980
I mean I'm no prude myself, but when some frog starts blasting the Hef, that's when I get a bit uptight.
--Terry Southern, "Grooving in Chi," 1968
This and nothing else is the desperately sought and tragically fragile writer's process: in his imagination, he sees made-up people doing things -- sees clearly -- and in the act of wondering what they will do next, he sees what they will do next, and all this he writes down in the best, most accurate words he can find, understanding even as he writes that he may have to find better words later, and that a change in the words may mean a sharpening or deepening of the vision, the fictive dream or vision becoming more and more lucid, until reality, by comparison, seems cold, tedious, and dead.
--John Gardner "Do You Have What It Takes to Become a Novelist?" 1983
When a writer does well, the rest of the country is doing fine.
--John Steinbeck, "A Primer on the 30's," 1960
In the months after I got back from Vietnam, the hundreds of helicopters I'd flown in began to draw together until they formed a collective meta-chopper, and in my head it was the sexiest thing going; saver-destroyer, provider-waster, right hand-left hand, nimble, fluent, canny and human; hot steel, grease, jungle-saturated canvas webbing, sweat cooling and warming up again, cassette rock 'n' roll in one ear and door-gun fire in the other, fuel, heat, vitality, and death, death itself no intruder.
--Michael Herr, "High on War," 1977
He turns the empty glass in his hand, and considers biting off the rim.
--Raymond Carver, "What Is It?" 1972
The two heaviest losers at the table -- a couple of cowboys in black silk shirts with embroidered roses that looked as wet and fresh as the nose of the moose hanging over the door -- were arguing over which of the Mandrell sisters they would want if they had to die in her embrace afterward, never to make love again.
--Pete Dexter, "Working Class Hero," 1985
I am the happiest man in the world and here's why: I walk down a street and I see a woman, not tall but well-proportioned, very dark haired, very neat in her dress, wearing a dark skirt with deep pleats that swing with the rhythm of her rather quick steps; her stockings, of dark color, are carefully, impeccably smooth; her face is not smiling, this woman walks down the street without trying to please, as if she were unconscious of what she represented: a good carnal image of woman, a physical image, more than a sexy image, a sexual image.
--Francois Truffant, "Happiest Man on Earth," 1970
Also, I shouldn't have to say this, but do not, under any circumstances, put Pop Rocks in your ass.
--Stacy Greenrock Woods, Sex Column, 2003
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Now he would never write the things that he had saved to write until he knew enough to write them well.
--Ernest Hemmingway, "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," 1936
So deeply imbedded was she in my consciousness that for the first few years of school I believed that each of my teachers was actually my mother in disguise.
--Phillip Roth, "A Jewish Patient Begins His Analysis," 1967
I shall sit at the calcified knobs that once were his knees and summon the courage to ask of Zim the question burning in my soul: Why does Joe Torre wear a wristwatch in the dugout?
--Scott Raab, "Zimmer," 2001
Commonsense has trampled down many a gentle genius whose eyes had delighted in a too early moonbeam of some too early truth; commonsense has back-kicked dirt at the lovliest of queer paintings because a blue tree seemed madness to its well-meaning hoof; commonsense has prompted ugly but frail nations to crush their fair but frail neighbors the moment a gap in history offered a chance that it would have been ridiculous not to exploit.
--Vladimir Nabokov, "How to Read, How to Write," 1980
I mean I'm no prude myself, but when some frog starts blasting the Hef, that's when I get a bit uptight.
--Terry Southern, "Grooving in Chi," 1968
This and nothing else is the desperately sought and tragically fragile writer's process: in his imagination, he sees made-up people doing things -- sees clearly -- and in the act of wondering what they will do next, he sees what they will do next, and all this he writes down in the best, most accurate words he can find, understanding even as he writes that he may have to find better words later, and that a change in the words may mean a sharpening or deepening of the vision, the fictive dream or vision becoming more and more lucid, until reality, by comparison, seems cold, tedious, and dead.
--John Gardner "Do You Have What It Takes to Become a Novelist?" 1983
When a writer does well, the rest of the country is doing fine.
--John Steinbeck, "A Primer on the 30's," 1960
In the months after I got back from Vietnam, the hundreds of helicopters I'd flown in began to draw together until they formed a collective meta-chopper, and in my head it was the sexiest thing going; saver-destroyer, provider-waster, right hand-left hand, nimble, fluent, canny and human; hot steel, grease, jungle-saturated canvas webbing, sweat cooling and warming up again, cassette rock 'n' roll in one ear and door-gun fire in the other, fuel, heat, vitality, and death, death itself no intruder.
--Michael Herr, "High on War," 1977
He turns the empty glass in his hand, and considers biting off the rim.
--Raymond Carver, "What Is It?" 1972
The two heaviest losers at the table -- a couple of cowboys in black silk shirts with embroidered roses that looked as wet and fresh as the nose of the moose hanging over the door -- were arguing over which of the Mandrell sisters they would want if they had to die in her embrace afterward, never to make love again.
--Pete Dexter, "Working Class Hero," 1985
I am the happiest man in the world and here's why: I walk down a street and I see a woman, not tall but well-proportioned, very dark haired, very neat in her dress, wearing a dark skirt with deep pleats that swing with the rhythm of her rather quick steps; her stockings, of dark color, are carefully, impeccably smooth; her face is not smiling, this woman walks down the street without trying to please, as if she were unconscious of what she represented: a good carnal image of woman, a physical image, more than a sexy image, a sexual image.
--Francois Truffant, "Happiest Man on Earth," 1970
Also, I shouldn't have to say this, but do not, under any circumstances, put Pop Rocks in your ass.
--Stacy Greenrock Woods, Sex Column, 2003
I was a little timid about submitting it; I've never put myself on the line like that except with friends. I am not afraid of criticism, but I wanted my first experience to be a pleasant one. *laughs*
