“Judge, looking up finally, straight-faced and serious, said, ‘I shit you not,’ as if under oath, and they both went silent as if the naked truth of Houdini and the Irish setter were tempting them to find out.” — Jack Driscoll from “Wanting Only to be Heard” in the collection of the same name.
What Driscoll is able to do with a sentence like this pushes me to always better myself, the fact that this sentence can stand here alone and be read and be understood as a turning point in a story without context is what makes it more than a beautiful sentence, but an important one, one that always has a lesson to teach.
I like your understanding of the sentence very much. That it’s important, in particular.
thanks, paula. i’m always trying to learn, to be better, and sentences like this stand out to me on a page because of what they have to tell me about writing.