“It was like looking at a rock pile and trying to imagine an avalanche.”
—from Guide, by Dennis Cooper
Found on p. 77 of Guide, this perfect sentence hangs off the end of its paragraph, gives resonance to the slim gulf of white-space that follows it down the face of the page, a page whose paragraphs I have long since memorized the shape of solely because they are home to this sentence, perhaps the first of many that one by one awakened in me my own want to build great sentences, a want that would eventually balance and then empower my equal but different want to tell great stories.
It would take me some time to find a sentence in Guide that I don’t love.