Our Lady of Syntax

This may be the best sentence I have ever read:

But surely to tell these tall tales and others like them would be to speed the myth, the wicked lie, that the past is always tense and the future, perfect.
--Zadie Smith, White Teeth

That comma just kills me.

DOING SOMETHING
It's so much easier to not do something than to do something. Even the smallest task, like filling out a Scholastic Books order form or putting away the butter, requires time, focus, and follow-through. It's astounding, actually, that anything gets done at all, by anyone.

But then, let's say you finally are prepared and determined to do that thing, whatever it is, but you wake up and find that your basement has flooded and you must spend your day making phone calls to the contractor, plumber, and carpet people. Or not that but something else--perhaps you must stand before a committee for approval, a committee that neither grasps your intent nor appreciates your ingenuity, and anyway, they are in a bit of a hurry to break for lunch.

Yet. Still. Somehow. I am encouraged to see that despite the colossal effort, despite the odds against one, despite the mere constraints of time and schedules and sore throats, houses do get built. pottery gets glazed, e-mails get sent, trees get planted, shoes get reheeled, manifestos get Xeroxed, films get shot, highways get repaved, cakes get frosted, stories get told.

--Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life, Amy Krouse Rosenthal



I lie in bed, still trembling. You can wet the rim of a glass and run your fingers around the rim and it will make a sound. This is what I feel like: this sound of glass. I feel like the word shatter. I want to be with someone.

--The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood