Last December, after enduring the year everybody loves to hate, I dug up the 20 most beautiful lines I had read. It was a process of mining for beauty in a time that needed it, and it proved to be highly beneficial to me. Looking for the most beautiful passages I read sunk me back into some spectacular prose and provided me with several minutes of respite. Additionally, I challenged myself to write out why those specific lines resonated with me, which solidified the learning for each passage.
To continue on with this ritual, which I foresee myself doing in perpetuity, here are the 21 most beautiful lines I read in 2021, plus why I underlined them:
“And, lying on my bed in some frigid biscuit-colored hotel room in Nice, with a balcony facing the Promenade des Anglais, I watch the clouds reflected on sliding pane and marvel how even my sadness can make me happy.”
— The Goldfinch | Donna Tartt
Why I underlined it: I had never read Donna Tartt until 2021, during which time I consumed everything she has written. I think she is one of the most brilliant writers of our time. Her prose bleeds beauty. I have so many passages underlined in her Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Goldfinch, that to choose which one to highlight here, I just opened the book to a random page and copied down what I had underlined. One of Tartt’s sentences does the job of most other writers’ entire paragraphs. The one above is just one small example of her infinite heart-wrenchingly beautiful — and sometimes beautiful in a gross, biscuit-colored way — prose.
“Books and ideas are like blood; they need to circulate, and they keep us alive.”
— The Paris Library | Janet Skeslien Charles
Why I underlined it: Because I couldn’t agree more with the sentiment. And while it’s not the most beautiful sentence in terms of prose, it’s beautiful in its truth, and writing — even fiction — is truth-telling.
“It was the season for truffles and literature. The countryside was redolent of wild herbs, and glowed in autumnal rust reds and wine yellows.”
— The Little Paris Bookshop | Nina George
Why I underlined it: The season for truffles and literature! I want to spend my life in that season, dusted with confectionary rust reds and wine yellows. To me, that is a stunning image.
“Trees creaking with apples, fallen apples red on the grass beneath, the heavy sweet smell of apples rotting on the ground and the steady thrumming of wasps around them. Commons clock tower: ivied brick, white spire, spellbound in the hazy distance. The shock of first seeing a birch tree at night, rising up in the dark as cool and slim as a ghost. And the nights, bigger than imagining: black and gusty, enormous, disordered and wild with stars.”
— The Secret History | Donna Tartt
Why I underlined it: I love the repetition in the first sentence of this paragraph. Often, writers try not to use the same word over and over because it seems clunky, unnecessary. But here, with Tartt’s use of “apples,” she’s writing musically and hitting all the right notes.
“There are a few time in life when you leap up and the past that you’d been standing on falls away behind you, and the future you mean to land on is not yet in place, and for a moment you’re suspended, knowing nothing and noone, not even yourself.”
— The Dutch House | Ann Patchett
Why I underlined it: Another bomb of absolute truth here. It is so lovely to me because I know the feeling very well, and yet I never put words to it. Finding oneself within writing is a gift, and it is only given by the most gifted writers.
“The time will come when your soul must be absolute with your conviction, and whatever your spread, and howsoever fast you are, you will only succeed if you fight like a fucking angel, fallen to fucking earth, with a heart absolute and full of conviction, without hesitation, doubt, or fear, no part of yourself divided against the other”
— My Absolute Darling | Gabriel Tallent
Why I underlined it: If you’ve read this book, you know it is a painful one to digest. The topic is taboo and sickening, but the prose is gorgeous, and even if some of the words seem superfluous, they weave together to create a powerful sentence that needs every one of its many words.
“As animals subject to the laws of earth, we think time is experience. But time is more a substance, like air, only of course not air. It is in fact a holy element.
— The Night Watchman | Louise Erdrich
Why I underlined it: I don’t know if I could dig up a more stunning explanation of time if I tried. Here we again have a simple explanation for something that we know to be true, but nobody but Erdrich found the words to spell out.
“Sometimes when you like where you end up, you don’t care how you got there.”
— An American Marriage | Tayari Jones
Why I underlined it: In a nice contrast to Patchett, this is a joyous feeling, ending up somewhere you like. I found beauty in this because the sentiment is satisfying in its simplicity.
“The tangling of so much cruelty and beauty has made of my life a strange, discordant landscape. It has left me with an awareness that haunts the edges of my vision — it can all be lost in a moment — but it’s also given me a jeweler’s eye.”
— Between Two Kingdoms | Suleika Jaouad
Why I underlined it: This book gutted me and put me back together. Author Suleika Jaouad strung together the most elegant pearls to create a heartwrenching story, one in which the reader can find beauty in the pain — like in the above passage.
“Talking to yourself can be useful. And writing means being overheard.”
— Intimations | Zadie Smith
Why I underlined it: Sometimes the simplest sentences speak to me the most. Why else to writers write, than to be overheard?
Photo by Author
“They ran prayer beads through their fingers and sipped mint tea in gold-rimmed cups shaped like hourglasses, steam floating off the surface and up into the bright blue sky.”
— You Exist Too Much | Zaina Arafat
Why I underlined it: This sentence is in the first paragraph of the book, and it was after reading it in the bookstore that I decided to purchase it. It is such an evocative image; I not only see it, but I feel it.
“On the way back into the city the traffic was heavy and the hot wint blew sand through the windows and the radio got on her nerves and after that Maria did not go back to the freeway except as a way of getting somewhere.”
— Play It As It Lays | Joan Didion
Why I underlined it: Run-on sentences dazzle me. Here, Didion uses a third-person point of view that speaks exactly the way the protagonist would had she been explaining this moment in the car to somebody else. That is art.
“God was in the folds of his bathrobe, the ache of his knees.”
— Run | Ann Patchett
Why I underlined it: A spectacular image that delights while also informing the reader of this man’s piety.
“I was terrifically hungry.”
— A Farewell to Arms | Ernest Hemingway
Why I underlined it: This is not the type of sentence one would typically recall when thinking about Hemingway, but I love it so much — its simplicity, its candor, and its relatability.
“… it tugged at something in her heart, something that radiated downward, a millisecond twinge of digestive churning that she recognized immediately as a particular kind of overwhelming, unrequited love.”
— The Most Fun We Ever Had | Claire Lombardo
Why I underlined it: Love. Is there anything else that is more written about? And yet Claire Lombardo found a way to describe the guttural experience that it can be.
“She was tall and slender, and she walked as though her limbs were made of thin twigs, as though wind could snap and collapse her.”
— Homegoing | Yaa Gyasi
Why I underlined it: The physical description of this woman evokes a sense of emotional frailty, too, doing double the job in just one sentence.
“i cannot
make you happy,
but i can
commit to support you
in the creation
of your own happiness”
— Inward | Yung Pueblo
Why I underlined it: I love these words and I love this notion. If only we could all commit to support our loved ones in the creation of their happiness!
“My hair — which is dark and curly — was as full of droplets as a Cloud. I rained every time I moved.”
— Piranesi | Susanna Clarke
Why I underlined it: This was absolutely the strangest book I read in 2021. But despite its quirkiness, it was loaded with well-crafted prose. The image of the character raining every time he moved put a smile on my face, providing a unique and appreciated moment of levity in this bizarre story.
“What child, no matter how lost or abandoned, does not ache to be loved?”
— Malibu Rising | Taylor Jenkins Reid
Why I underlined it: Put together in this order, these words do not equate to beauty for me. However, the meaning does, and it is the simple way this idea is delivered that made it powerful to me.
“You don’t need an idea to start a story. You just need a sentence. Where does that sentence come from? Wherever. It doesn’t have to be anything special. It will become something special, over time, as you keep reacting to it.”
— A Swim in a Pond in the Rain | George Saunders
Why I underlined it: I underlined and starred this passage because it’s what every writer needs to hear; it’s what every artist should know as they create.
“Amid the gray, an incongruous band of daytime blue asserts itself. To the west, a pink sun already begins its descent. The effect is of three isolated aspects, distinct phases of the day. All of it, strewn across the horizon, is contained in his vision.”
— The Lowland | Jhumpa Lahiri
Why I underlined it: What a picturesque passage to end on! Humans have been writing about sunsets since, presumably, we acquired the skill. But this is so much more than a sunset. It’s a band of blue slicing through gray, a pink sun descending, and all three different colors are memories of distinct times of the day. It is an elegant way of revealing the passing of time.
There were so many more beautiful lines I read in 2021, but these are among the most powerful — the ones that resonated with me on a cellular level. I hope that, in reading these lines, you, too, found some beauty.
I would love to know some of the most beautiful lines you read in 2021. If you create a similar list, please share it with me!