From "My Life's Sentences" by Jhumpa Lahiri
Surely it is a magical
thing for a handful of words, artfully arranged, to stop time. To conjure a
place, a person, a situation, in all its specificity and dimensions. To affect
us and alter us, as profoundly as real people and things do.
The best sentences
orient us, like stars in the sky, like landmarks on a trail. They remain the test,
whether or not to read something. The most compelling narrative, expressed in
sentences with which I have no chemical reaction, or an adverse one, leaves me
cold. In fiction, plenty do the job of conveying information, rousing suspense,
painting characters, enabling them to speak. But only certain sentences breathe
and shift about, like live matter in soil.
