The perfect sentence

Status
Not open for further replies.

blacbird

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Mar 21, 2005
Messages
36,987
Reaction score
6,158
Location
The right earlobe of North America
From literature, that one sentence, better than which no one could possibly do. My nominee, from Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian), in reference to a group of men traversing the desert:

They rode through a region where iron will not rust nor tin tarnish.

I might as well hang it up now (the thought has crossed my mind more than once, lately). I'll never write a sentence better than that.

caw
 

alleycat

Still around
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Apr 18, 2005
Messages
72,873
Reaction score
12,224
Location
Tennessee
I won't argue that it's the perfect sentence, but I've always had a fondness for this line from the opening of The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley:

When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahern, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon.

The "All the world's a stage" soliloquy by Bill Shakespeare is pretty good too.
 
Last edited:

Phaeal

Whatever I did, I didn't do it.
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 11, 2008
Messages
9,232
Reaction score
1,897
Location
Providence, RI
This is an impossible task. However, I'm rather fond of "Call me Ishmael."
 

James81

Great Scott Member
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Nov 28, 2007
Messages
5,239
Reaction score
1,017
I nominate this one from Wally Lamb's "I Know this Much is True":

I am not a smart man, particularly, but one day, at long last, I stumbled from the dark woods of my own, and my family's, and my country's past, holding in my hands these truths: that love grows from the rich loam of forgiveness; that mongrels make good dogs; that the evidence of God exists in the roundness of things.
 

Round John Virgin

Super Member
Registered
Joined
May 4, 2008
Messages
787
Reaction score
73
Location
too close to civilization
Website
michaelboyd.us
The opening line of Forrest Gump, by Winston Groom: "Let me say this: Bein a idiot is no box of chocolates." :D

I can't believe Groom let the Hollywood screenwriters change it to this PC pablum for the movie: "Mama always said life's like a box of chocolates: You never know what you're going to get." What watered-down crap! :rant:
 

Stew21

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Mar 2, 2006
Messages
27,651
Reaction score
9,136
Location
lost in headspace
All things truly wicked start from an innocence.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY, A Moveable Feast
 
Status
Not open for further replies.