Chosen by The yank Scholar editors in concert of the “ten best sentences,” the passage, writes Roy Peter

Clark, achieves quite feat: “Long sentences don’t sometimes hold along underneath the load of
abstractions, however this one sets a transparent path to the foremost vital phrase, planted firmly at the
tip, ‘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 cyprinid fish living during a bowl stretched its jaws; the door
banged shut, the steps creaked, the electric refrigerator hummed, the curtains billowed up, the pot
cooked, the gas hissed through the stove, the tree branches serious with snow crashed against the roof;
my heart beat loudly thud! thud!, little 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 have a tendency to trust her semi-colons and follow till we have a tendency to square
measure shocked to seek out the amount. we have a tendency to stand thereon rock of a period—with
water all around U.S.A., and ask: however did we have a tendency to get here?”

The diary Paperback author brings U.S.A. the “puzzle” below from disreputable long-sentence-writer
Virginia Woolf’s essay “On Being Ill”:

Considering however common unhealthiness is, however tremendous the religious amendment that it
brings, however astonishing, once the lights of health go down, the undiscovered countries that square
measure then disclosed, what wastes and deserts of the soul a small attack of respiratory illness brings
to look at, what precipices and lawns besprent with bright flowers a bit rise of temperature reveals,
what ancient and obdurate oaks square measure uprooted in U.S.A. by the act of illness, however we
have a tendency to go down into mythical place of death and feel the water of annihilation shut higher
than our heads and wake thinking to seek out ourselves within the presence of the angels and harpers
once 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 acknowledgement of the supernatural being round-
shouldered from the ground of Heaven to welcome U.S.A. – once we think about this, as we have a
tendency to square measure ofttimes forced to think about it, it becomes strange so that unhealthiness
has not taken its place amorously and battle and jealousy among the prime themes of literature.

Blogger Rebekah quotes Adeline Virginia Stephen Woolf 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 the terribly mollie Bloom-like sentence below from
John Updike’s Rabbit, Run:

But then they were married (she felt awful regarding being pregnant before however Harry had been
talking regarding wedding for a minute and anyway laughed once she told him in early February
regarding missing her amount and aforementioned nice she was very frightened and he aforementioned
nice and raised her place his arms around underneath her bottom and raised her such as you would a
toddler he can be therefore howling once you didn’t expect it during a means it appeared vital that you
simply didn’t expect it there was such a lot nice in him she couldn’t indicate to anybody she had been
therefore frightened regarding being pregnant and he created her be proud) they were married when
her missing her playing period in March and he or she was still very little clumsy dark-complected Janice
Springer and her husband was a self-conceited lunk WHO wasn’t sensible for all the world within the
world begetter aforementioned and also 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 therefore, however they reward that patience with delight for people
who love language too wealthy for the pinched limitations of ordinary descriptive linguistics and syntax.