"It could be that the poet wishes to tell you about his or her life. A few images of some fleeting moment when one was happy or exceptionally lucid. The secret wish of poetry is to stop time. The poet wants to retrieve a face, a mood, a cloud in the sky, a tree in the wind, and take a kind of mental photograph of that moment in which you as a reader recognize yourself." From Charles Simic's A fly in the soup. #SundaySentence #Poetry #quote

"I like the anarchy of the city. There were dives and strip joints a few blocks from the monumental Art institute, with its magnificent collection of painting, and the ritzy hotels.Chicago was the garage sale of all the contradictions America could contain. A rusty water tower on top of an old warehouse would look as beautiful as some architectural wonder along the lakeshore." Another #SundaySentence (or so) from Charles Simic's memoir "A fly in the soup" #writing #books #bookstodon

"She was quoting Serhiy Zhadan, her favorite poet: 'Ya liubiu tsiu krainu davit biz kokainu" -"I love this country even without cocaine." I prosaically chimed in, "And without anti-depressants, either."- from The Ukraine by Artem Chapeye (The New Yorker) #SundaySentence #Ukraine

"Then the confusion of embraces and kisses, the emotion of his seeing my brother for the first time, the search for a porter, the wait for a taxi, and everybody talking at the same time. It was all incredible and wonderful!The trash on the streets, the way people were dressed, the tall buildings, the dirt, the heat, the yellow cabs, the billboards and signs. It was nothing like Europe. It was terrifically ugly and beautiful at the same time! I liked America immediately." From A Fly in the Soup by Charles Simic
A belated #SundaySentence. #bookstodon #books #writing

What's the best sentence or bit of writing you've read recently?

"I liked Jack; I knew him immediately. He was a great swinging mixture of passion and fun. His eye could pin you dead, then wink at you. He had both eyes for the women and a tenor voice that could open cans." from A Star Called Henry by Roddy Doyle #SundaySentence #bookstodon #quote

Hell is all around us and is in session as we speak.

#SundaySentence from everyday life and also The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka

#SundaySentence
"I lost an arm on my last trip home."
#OctaviaButler #Kindred
IMO, one of the great #OpeningSentences.
What are other great openers?
#bookstodon @bookstodon #books

"Or what amounts to the same thing: they want to watch the great masters spar, but they have no interest in real combat, when the great masters struggle against that something, that something that terrifies us all, that something that cows us and spurs us on, amid blood and mortal wounds and stench.”

#SundaySentence from one of my favorite paragraphs in a book that expanded my expectations about what a novel could do in ways that I hadnt felt since Garcia Marquez: #RobertoBolaño's #2666

“People love to believe in danger, as long as it’s you in harm’s way, and them saying bless your heart.“ 
#SundaySentence from Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead

"She took pleasure in presents not only because she liked things—things, that nearly fatal accumulation—but because she liked being thought of. A present, after all, meant just that: Out in the world, a person saw something and thought of you."

#SundaySentence from the extraordinary The Hero of this Book by Elizabeth McCracken

“They are not the kind of friends who love each other best when they are in the same place, riding the same fields. They, the queen writes, must be friends at a distance.“ 

Another #SundaySentence from Lauren Groff's Matrix. I'll be thinking about this book for a long time.

Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree.
~Herman Hesse
#SundaySentence

“Mami had collected all the cash she could find and given it to him; all the while, to keep him from assaulting her, she described what she imagined snow to be like.”
-Ingrid Rojas Contreras, THE MAN WHO COULD MOVE CLOUDS: A MEMOIR
#SundaySentence #amreading

"We all choose our sins, and their measure."
from Hanif Abdurraqib's "Paris" in They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us

#SundaySentence