Chosen by The yankee Scholar editors together of the “ten best sentences,” the passage, writes Roy

Peter Clark, achieves quite feat: “Long sentences don’t sometimes hold along below the burden of
abstractions, however this one sets a transparent path to the foremost necessary phrase, planted firmly
at the top, ‘his capability for surprise.’”

Jane Wong at Tin House’s diary “The Open Bar” quotes the hypnotic sentence below from Jamaica
Kincaid’s “The Letter from Home.”

I milked the cows, I churned the butter, I hold on the cheese, I baked the bread, I brewed the tea, I
washed the garments, I dressed the children; the cat meowed, the dog barked, the horse neighed, the
mouse squeaked, the fly buzzed, the Carassius auratus living in an exceedingly bowl stretched its jaws;
the door banged shut, the steps creaked, the icebox hummed, the curtains billowed up, the pot
poached, the gas hissed through the stove, the tree branches significant with snow crashed against the
roof; my heart beat loudly thud! thud!, small beads of water grew folds, I shed my skin…

Kincaid’s sentences, Wong writes, “have the flexibility to at the same time suspend and propel the
reader. we tend to trust her semi-colons and follow till we tend to area unit shocked to search out the
amount. we tend to stand thereon rock of a period—with water all around USA, and ask: however did
we tend to get here?”

The diary Paperback author brings USA the “puzzle” below from infamous long-sentence-writer Virginia
Woolf’s essay “On Being Ill”:

Considering however common ill health is, however tremendous the religious amendment that it brings,
however astonishing, once the lights of health go down, the undiscovered countries that area unit then
disclosed, what wastes and deserts of the soul a small attack of contagion brings to look at, what
precipices and lawns wet with bright flowers a bit rise of temperature reveals, what ancient and
obdurate oaks area unit uprooted in USA by the act of illness, however we tend to go down into infernal
region of death and feel the water of annihilation shut higher than our heads and wake thinking to
search out ourselves within the presence of the angels and harpers after we have a tooth out and are
available to the surface within the dentist’s arm-chair and confuse his “Rinse the Mouth —- rinse the
mouth” with the salutation of the god stooped from the ground of Heaven to welcome USA – after we
consider this, as we tend to area unit oftentimes forced to consider it, it becomes strange so that ill
health has not taken its place amorously and battle and jealousy among the prime themes of literature.

Blogger wife quotes author as a challenge to her readers to become higher writers. “This sentence isn't
one thing to be feared,” she writes, “it are a few things to be embraced.”

Finally, from The Barnes & Noble Book diary, we've got the terribly poeciliid fish Bloom-like sentence
below from John Updike’s Rabbit, Run:

But then they were married (she felt awful concerning being pregnant before however Harry had been
talking concerning wedding for a short time and anyway laughed once she told him in early Gregorian
calendar month concerning missing her amount and aforesaid nice she was really frightened and he
aforesaid nice and raised her place his arms around below her bottom and raised her such as you would
a toddler he may be thus howling once you didn’t expect it in an exceedingly method it appeared
necessary that you just didn’t expect it there was most nice in him she couldn’t inform anybody she had
been thus frightened concerning being pregnant and he created her be proud) they were married when
her missing her playing period in March and she or he was still very little clumsy dark-complected Janice
Springer and her husband was a vain lunk UN agency wasn’t sensible for any price within the world papa
aforesaid and therefore the feeling of being alone would soften a bit with a bit drink.

Sentences like these, writes Barnes & Noble blogger Hanna McGrath, “demand one thing from the
reader: patience.” which will be thus, however they reward that patience with delight for those that
love language too made for the pinched limitations of unremarkable descriptive linguistics and syntax.