Hemingway and the Perfect Sentence

Hemingway was known for crafting enticing emotional statements into descriptive sentences that drew you in.

He mastered the art of saying more with less — using as few words as necessary, or as many as a moment demanded.

His skill was evident in his often attributed one-sentence book, “For sale, baby shoes, never worn.”

Some others include:

“If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.” — from A Farewell to Arms:

“I hated my mother as soon as I knew the score and loved my father until he embarrassed me with his cowardice…. My mother is an all time all American bitch and she would make a pack mule shoot himself; let alone poor bloody father.” — Unattibuted (I wrote it down, but can’t recall where it came from)

“Nick watched them, holding his rod, the felt soles of his boots gripping the pebbles, and watched the trout keeping themselves steady in the moving stream, the tips of their tails moving against the current, their side fins trembling in the fast water.” — from Big Two-Hearted River

“Below them the stream ran fast in a narrow gorge, green in the eddies and white where it raced over the rocks, hurrying always downward, its noise constant and ceaseless in the mountain quiet.” — from For Whom the Bell Tolls

I discovered another favorite while reading a collection of his short stories, selected and introduced by Tobias Wolff. In “Now I Lay Me,” he opens in the first paragraph with:

“I myself did not want to sleep because I had been living for a long time with the knowledge that if I ever shut my eyes in the dark and let myself go, my soul would go out of my body.”

This last one, an unexpected find in a small and less famous work, says a lot and hits close to home.

Words can be powerful, and sometimes perfect.

Disclaimer/Disclosure: My posts are personal observations, experiences, and perspectives meant to share information. I claim no professional expertise in financial, health, spiritual, or any other matters. I have no affiliation with any product, service, or person contained in this article, nor have I received, or expect to receive, any compensation in any way from the same.

If you haven’t subscribed to Medium yet and want to join, you can use this link to sign up. A small portion of the monthly subscription will go towards helping me write more posts like this, and you’ll gain full access to all Medium stories!