Treasure Hunt for Sentence Gems

Dec 5

…sparkly ones I’ve hoarded like Scrooge McDuck’s bucks. One day when I grow up, I want to write like this. Last updated 3 Jan 2025

While I grew and flexed the muscles of my mind, the bodies of strong young men were being poured ruthlessly into the 500-mile gutter that was the Western Front, an entire generation of men subjected to the grinding, body-rotting, mind-shattering impossibility of battle in thigh-deep mud and drifts of searing gas, under machine gun fire and through tangles of wire.
— Laurie R. King, The Beekeeper’s Apprentice (1994)

And although she may not have torched her rivals directly, she also never ran for the firehose as they were self-immolating.
— Kati Morton, The Chancellor: The Remarkable Odyssey of Angela Merkel (2021)

No hedging, no sugarcoated vacillation: there it lay, like a turd on the table between us. Hopeful mirth packed her little bags and left the room.
— Lucie B. Amundsen, Locally Laid (2016)

If only she could be so oblivious again, to feel such love without knowing it, mistaking it for laughter and bread with only the scent of jam spread out on top of it. It was the best time of her life.
— Markus Zusak, The Book Thief (2005)

A teenage usher in a vintage red jacket with puffed sleeves escorts us to our seats, his biceps manacled in clouds, threads loosening from the badge on his chest.
— Karen Russell, “Vampires in the Lemon Grove” (2013)

I emerged into the sticky-hot evening to find Ricky smoking on the hood of his battered car. Something about his mud-encrusted boots and the way he let smoke curl from his lips and how the sinking sun lit his green hair reminded me of a punk, redneck James Dean. He was all of those things, a bizarre cross-pollination of subcultures possible only in South Florida.
— Ransom Riggs, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2011)

But I liked the stickle brick nature of it. Building long, supple words by putting short ones together. Things could be brought into being that had no name in English. Weltanshauung. Schadenfreude. Sippenhaft. Sonderweg. Scheißfreundlichkeit. Vergangenheitsbewältigung. I liked the sweeping range of words from heartfelt to heartsick. And I liked the order, the directness that I imagined in the people.
— Anna Funder, Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall (2002)

The earth was soft and crumbling, with a scattering of the weeds that are found in cultivated fields—fumitory, charlock, pimpernel and mayweed, all growing in the green gloom under the bean leaves. As the plants moved in the breeze, the sunlight dappled and speckled back and forth over the brown soil, the white pebbles and weeds.
— Richard Adams, Watership Down (1972)

“Business!” cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. “Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”
— Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol (1843)

My heart jumps sideways. She’s a conjuring trick; a reptile; a fallen angel; a gryphon from the pages of an illuminated bestiary; something bright and distant like gold falling through water; a broken marionette of wings, legs, and light-splashed feathers.
— Helen MacDonald, H is for Hawk (2014)

The land is filled with monsters, and the beast that dwells beneath Kasulo is a thousand-headed hydra, mouths agape at the surface, waiting for its prey to enter.
— Siddharth Kara, Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives (2022)

Whenever the Jesuit mentioned my mother, he looked at the urn as if she were a jack-in-the-box waiting for someone to crank the handle.
— Justin St. Germain, Son of a Gun (2014)

The only non-smoker in the room was Adolfo Izzo, who merely had to breathe to acquire the habit.
— Douglas Preston, The Monster of Florence (2006)

Such was the oppressive ugliness of this building, it would have been like sticking a red nose on a cadaver and calling it Ronald McDonald.
— Jon Ronson, The Psychopath Test (2011)

Joel and Ashley Selby

Treasure Hunt for Sentence Gems

And although she may not have torched her rivals directly, she also never ran for the firehose as they were self-immolating.

No hedging, no sugarcoated vacillation: there it lay, like a turd on the table between us. Hopeful mirth packed her little bags and left the room.

If only she could be so oblivious again, to feel such love without knowing it, mistaking it for laughter and bread with only the scent of jam spread out on top of it. It was the best time of her life.

A teenage usher in a vintage red jacket with puffed sleeves escorts us to our seats, his biceps manacled in clouds, threads loosening from the badge on his chest.

“Business!” cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. “Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”

My heart jumps sideways. She’s a conjuring trick; a reptile; a fallen angel; a gryphon from the pages of an illuminated bestiary; something bright and distant like gold falling through water; a broken marionette of wings, legs, and light-splashed feathers.

The land is filled with monsters, and the beast that dwells beneath Kasulo is a thousand-headed hydra, mouths agape at the surface, waiting for its prey to enter.

Whenever the Jesuit mentioned my mother, he looked at the urn as if she were a jack-in-the-box waiting for someone to crank the handle.

The only non-smoker in the room was Adolfo Izzo, who merely had to breathe to acquire the habit.

Such was the oppressive ugliness of this building, it would have been like sticking a red nose on a cadaver and calling it Ronald McDonald.

7 Baseball Haiku at Camden Yards