Sentences That Melt Us Like Ice Cream on a Tongue

The right sentence hits us like a precise body walking past just when we need it. Speechless, ironically, that's how the perfect utterance leaves us, as if that crystalline grammar triggers some safety catch to prevent us from diminishing the significance with an inferior follow up. (Or for those more spiritually inclined, surely an intense angel wraps our mouths with ethereal duct tape to keep a divine moment so.) We freeze in the mouth; our insides burn.

We are lucky to hear a handful of perfections in our life. There's so many components that go into making something great into something more, something strong enough to make us change our career, or cheat on our husband, or remain in a daze as our subway stop is suddenly behind us, the driver's words about which stop silent to our engaged mind. But why list them, why bother? It's a simple thing to break down what comprises a good sentence, a good body—firm structure, concise message, original form, comfortable context, explosive confidence. But something perfect? If we can see the hydrogen separately from the oxygen in a glass of water, are we better for it?

Among other elements constituting this alchemy, it's the lack of details that create the memorable mystique. We don't understand why that certain phrase said by this specific person in that extant place during this nonce time affects us, but the reason is too individual and secret to warrant an examination. When the combination of structure, inspiration, and allure activates chemicals in our brain that flow so quickly we swear we can feel their movement, shoving our blood from a steady state into a torrent, we've been made, we've been knighted, we have sprung, we blossom, we are on, we are.

So when the Brazilian woman serves me English beer in a Chinese bar, those five or six lines that shaped the course of my life pulse through my now-perfect life. I may never have a beer this important again, but I'm willing to keep trying.