What's Your Best Sentence?

Not an all-time favorite, but here's the one I was most happy with from the last story I wrote ("Dead Girls").


"When his grandparents had been alive they’d sat like stoic, sexless bookends holding down either end of the massive table, a library of silence stretched between them."


And one from my current WIP:

"She supposed maybe that’s what ghosts were: an exhalation of sorrow, a burst of anger, breaths of regret trapped beneath a bell jar that escaped in little puffs every time it was jostled."

I'm a little bit proud of the opening line of the story I am working on now:

"Being the last farmer’s daughter in a community overrun by doctor’s kids is as pleasant an experience as nailing your thumb to a fence post."

These are all awesome! Wow! Keep them coming!!! 

George Berger said:

I'm kind of proud of some of the sentences in my erotic novella that contains no dirty words, but I probably shouldn't post those, here.

A WIP contains this:

The waitress - a grandmotherly sort of woman, in all the wrong, hard-drinking, chain-smoking sorts of ways - took their orders with a refreshing degree of antipathy, and they were left alone with little to distract themselves.

Whether that belongs in the other thread or not is perhaps a matter for debate.

I don't know that it's my best sentence, but a pretty crazy number of people have highlighted it on the Kindle, so...

He's still only a couple of years old, and he may not understand very much about the world in which we all live, but he's learned enough of pain and loss and heartbreak and suffering and loneliness to begin to understand that while a single dream can last for a lifetime, love is something you have to enjoy while you have the chance.

So, um, yeah.

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How can you tell someone has highlighted a sentence of yours on their kindle?

Warning - it's a lengthy "artistic run-on" sentence, the kind my girlfriend/proofreader hates  but I insist on doing anyway 

Talk of Gettysburg; remembrances of the war; flashbacks to those days in Tombstone when fisticuffs or even gunplay might be but a flash away at any moment...a man looking at 75 years of age in less than three weeks surely didn't need these thoughts and images rattling around his head if he wanted to ease his way towards that final reckoning with days filled with the peace and quiet of rye whiskey and poker and little else.

Maybe this one.

Miles below the surface of a very young planet, much later to be called Earth, chemistry and physics were at work although there were no humans to put their own names on these processes. 

Excellent, nothing like a little self-promotion! Here's one from a recent story, and hopefully it's not cheating, but adding the line before so there's some context:

“Simon, writing is an expression of your thoughts, it should be coherent.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Gilbert, but since when was love coherent?”

"She folds like the bipod on a sniper rifle after the kill shot."

I was pretty proud of that simile when I wrote it.  My editor even gave it its own comment bubble.

But I like this one too - same scene:  

"If you cross me I’ll hunt you down like a nightdog looking for a b*tch on hump day and kill you in a way that will definitely make the news, understand?"

Ha - good one Julie. Junco doesn't mince words, does she?

  I wish WC had a "like" function! It's actually really great to read all of these! More, more, more!!!

  Keith

Ada O'Flaherty said:

How can you tell someone has highlighted a sentence of yours on their kindle?

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You can browse your books at kindle.amazon.com, and see what notes people have left, and what they've highlighted.

These are the notes and highlights for my most popular book, for example.

  Here's mine, from a WIP:

  Just for a moment Jaelle saw, not her friend, or even the Guild's Master Venom, but rather the uncaring visage of one so acquainted with the grave that its cold breath had found a way inside of him, eating away everything vital and leaving only a gray shell of muscle and bone eager to do death’s bidding.

George Berger said:

You can browse your books at kindle.amazon.com, and see what notes people have left, and what they've highlighted.

These are the notes and highlights for my most popular book, for example.

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Oh how very cool! Thanks!

From my most recent WIP, almost complete.

"Survival is the slowest and most painful form of suicide."

mheathman said:

From my most recent WIP, almost complete.

"Survival is the slowest and most painful form of suicide."

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Oh golly.... that's a good line.

Thanks for asking.

I have to include two lead-up sentences for context . . . if you'll join me on the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua:

“The young Swiss doctor sat with Ana on his left.  She was radiant.  . . .  When he looked at her just right he would see her face ensconced in the halo of the velvet painting of Mary that hung behind her on the sea-blue wall, right next to the Victoria Beer calendar.”

I opened an epub file and scanned for something random that amused me. I like this one:

So, after I finished (metaphorically) pooping my pants, I changed out of my pajamas (I'd lied to Marc about being naked) and threw on some clothes from the floor.

I don't know why my characters are so slovenly and crude. No idea.

I've had several emails from readers commenting they liked the opening lines from two of my books

Opening line from "Tear in Time" (that's tear, as in torn):
"Life and destiny stood for one last moment, perfectly synced in time. Never again would the world see the past as they remembered, as one death would change the world's destiny forever."

Opening line from "Secret Kinship":
"True atonement can neither be advertised nor celebrated. Its sin is a private nature to be considered between you and God only."

Opening line from the sequel to "Tear in Time" (yet to be released):
"Two autos raced upon their destiny. The irony of life's tragedy had come full circle."