If you were to flip through any one of the hundreds of books on my shelf, you’d see that I destruct them. The more beat up they are, the more I loved them. I underline, star, write notes, and dog-ear lines in my books whenever they make me pause, which could be for any number of reasons. It could be that they’re skillfully done, they evoke an emotion that’s surprising to me, they paint an unusual picture, or simply that they are beautiful.
I flipped through the books I read this year and chose the 20 most beautiful sentences I had the pleasure of reading. Below you’ll find sentences — or in some cases a couple of them to provide context or complete a thought, and in the case of Elena Ferrante, the opening sentence of a book — that I deemed worthy of underlines, plus the reason why I underlined them.
Please enjoy:
“Because the rains were late, the road was a desiccated crust, hard as marble underfoot. Ripe fruit exploded when it hit the ground. Hot air blew down from the high trees, their dry fronds cracking against each other. Bugs aimed for her eyes and mouth, looking for moisture.”
— Euphoria | Lily King
Why I underlined it: King uses the beautiful juxtaposition of soft, ripe fruit with hard-as-marble crust, then again pins cracking dry fronds against bugs looking for moisture in eyes and a mouth. These extremes do the work of boring adjectives and useless adverbs.
“If his presence was weather, it was a cloud on an otherwise clear day. It wasn’t a tornado; it wasn’t even a storm.”
— Transcendent Kingdom | Yaa Gyasi
Why I underlined it: Sometimes the simplest sentences throw the heaviest punches. It was the subtlety of this metaphor that resonated with me.
“Back outside the cafe now, the sunlight is so strong it crunches all the colors up and makes them sting.”
— Normal People | Sally Rooney
Why I underlined it: Can colors crunch up? Can they sting? Not really, but they can in Rooney’s world — and they do. This description left no doubt in my mind how dramatic the sunshine was outside of that cafe.
“Maybe another person couldn’t irrevocably save you, but they could sometimes calm you down, and that felt like an exquisitely magical thing.”
— Claire Lombardo | The Most Fun We Ever Had
Why I underlined it: This tome of a book is all about relationships: Relationships between parents and children, between brothers and sisters, and between lovers. In one brief sentence, Lombardo sums up the magic that can happen between two people, even if they cannot save you.
“I will not stay, not ever again — in a room or conversation or relationship or institution that requires me to abandon myself.”
— Glennon Doyle | Untamed
Why I underlined it: YES. I would have double-underlined this one had there been room on the page. This is such a powerful statement. Self-abandonment is unwarranted, no matter the room or conversation or relationship or institution you’re in. This is a solid reminder for everybody.
“I think that’s the saddest thing in the world, the failure of love. Not hatred, but the failure of love.”
— Rebecca Makkai | The Great Believers
Why I underlined it: Love is fickle. We’ve all experienced the failure of love and it hurts. This is a new idea to me, that a failed love could hurt more than hatred.
“It was strong, whatever was between us, thick, like the wet air and the smell of every green thing ready to bloom.”
— Lovers & Writers | Lily King
Why I underlined it: A stunning simile to explain the connection between two people. I especially appreciate her saying “every green thing” instead of something more specific, like maple leaves or grass. It’s a nod to the vastness of whatever was happening between them.
“When you need to make a decision, in your work or otherwise, and you don’t know what to do, just do one thing or the other, because the worst that can happen is that you will have made a terrible mistake.”
— Bird by Bird | Anne Lamott
Why I underlined it: This made me laugh. But is it not true? The worst that can happen is that you’ve made a terrible mistake. And then what? Then life goes on because it has to. This is something an indecisive person like myself could do with being reminded of on a daily basis.
“Fear the thought that right now, you could be contributing to the oppression of others and you don’t know it. But do not fear those who bring that oppression to light. Do not fear the opportunity to do better.”
— So You Want to Talk About Race | Ijeoma Oluo
Why I underlined it: Like the Lammot sentence, this is something I — and many others — should be reminded of daily. The realization of your own oppression of others would feel awful, but doing better is not something to fear. Doing better is something to strive for, and as such, finding out if you’re contributing to the oppression of anybody is information to seek out.
“Two years before leaving home my father said to my mother that I was very ugly.”
— The Lying Life of Adults | Elena Ferrante
Why I underlined it: This is the opening sentence in The Lying Life of Adults. The rest of the paragraph is equally as matter-of-fact and harsh, and I think it’s a courageous and bold way to kick off a book. It had me hooked immediately.
“Dublin is extraordinarily beautiful to her in wet weather, the way gray stone darkens to black, and rain moves over the grass and whispers on slick roof tiles. Raincoats glistening in the undersea color of street lamps. Rain silver as loose change in the glare of traffic.”
— Normal People | Sally Rooney
Why I underlined it: What is the undersea color of street lamps? What does loose change look like in the glare of traffic? I’ve never seen them, but I can picture exactly the colors Rooney is talking about here. This is an artful description of a city so often written about.
“Their voices even sounded alike: higher than average, with a touch of caramel on the back of the tongue.”
— All Adults Here | Emma Straub
Why I underlined it: I can just hear someone talking with a touch of caramel on the back of the tongue. This is such a clever way of describing the sound of something. Writing about sounds can be tricky, and Straub reached to another sense — taste — to do it.
“It had been winter for so long that the air didn’t hurt anymore.”
— Rebecca Makkai |The Great Believers
Why I underlined it: Anyone who lives in a northern climate can appreciate how numb you can become to an oppressive winter. Additionally, this is a much better way of highlighting passing time than stating what month it was or how many weeks had passed.
“I loved the crack of a newly flexed spine, and the way the brand-new pages almost felt damp, as if they were wet with creation.”
— The Library Book |Susan Orlean
Why I underlined it: If you’ve read this far, you’d likely underline this, too. Ever the beautiful wordsmith, Orlean used her skill to bring all of our favorite objects — books — to life.
“And beside this flower, or kin with it, growing from the same stem as the blazing, is an as-yet-unwrapped bud, greenish with the least hint of yellow, shining in the breeze, on the verge, I imagine, of exploding.”
— The Book of Delights | Ross Gay
Why I underlined it: Have you ever looked at a flower bud and waxed so poetic over it? I haven’t, and that’s why I underlined this sentence. It’s remarkable what some people can pull out of something so seemingly ordinary.
“I pictured the day of my father’s funeral — brushing my hair in the mirror in my black dress, picking at my cuticles until they bled, how my vision got blurry with tears walking down the stairs and I almost tripped, the streaks of autumn leaves blearing by as I drove my mother to the university chapel in her Trans Am, the space between us filling with tangled ribbons of pale blue smoke from her Virginia Slim, her saying not to open a window because the wind would mess up her hair.”
— My Year of Rest and Relaxation | Otessa Moshfegh
Why I underlined it: This one sentence tells an entire story in itself. We learn that her father died; that it was autumn; that her mother drove a certain kind of car, making her a certain kind of person; and that her mother, who smokes, cares more about her appearance than the health of her daughter. This is skill at its finest.
“Even though you’re the reason I wake through the night, you’re the reason I wake in the morning, the reason my tank is empty, and the same reason it’s full.”
— From One Mom to a Mother | Jessica Urlichs
Why I underlined it: I think this sentence would speak to most parents. It’s beautiful and it’s true, the two sides of the parenthood coin.
“My father’s hands were soil. My mother’s were rain. No wonder they could not hold one another without causing enough mud for two. And yet out of that mud, they built us a house that became a home.”
— Betty | Stephanie McDaniel
Why I underlined it: This is just sheer beauty. Period.
“It is a sweet correction this computer keeps making, turning pawpaw into papaw, which means, for those of you not from this neck of the woods, papa or grandpa, which a pawpaw grove can feel like, especially standing inside of it midday, when the light limns the big leaves like stained glass and suddenly you’re inside something ancient and protective.”
— The Book of Delights | Ross Gay
Why I underlined it: How charming! Run-on sentences, when done well like this one, can be so much fun. This is a playful combination of Gay’s two most-covered topics in this book: relationships and gardening, and I think it’s brilliant.
“He thinks of blond ladies and whales and he worries that if he tried to find words, he might dissolve into syllables, into the air particles, into the very cold around him.”
— Dear Edward | Ann Napolitano
Why I underlined it: This sentence is perplexing, and the feeling it leaves me with is intrigue. What does Napolitano mean by that? I want to know more, I want to get deeper inside the character’s head. And what is the role of a writer if not to evoke that feeling?
These 20 sentences, so different from one another and yet equally powerful, were some of the most beautiful sentences I came upon this year, and I hope they speak to you as much as they did me. If you underlined any in the books you read this year, I’d be delighted if you’d share them.
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