Perfect Sentences

Perfect Sentences

Archives
Log in
Subscribe
October 25, 2026

Perfect Sentences, 200

Perfect Sentences Perfect Sentences

200 entries! A pleasing milestone.


He had a name before he got this way.

This Year: 365 Songs Annotated, John Darnielle

It's a closing sentence in context, but would also make a terrific lead.


Other thieves were slightly more respectable.

Comet Madness: How the 1910 Return of Halley's Comet (Almost) Destroyed Civilization, Richard J. Goodrich

Submitted by Wesley.


No, whether you like it or not, by decorating your stoop, you have opted into a citywide dialogue about what happens when you die.

"Do These Brooklyn Halloween Decorations Even Grasp Our Mortality?", Hell Gate

This post screams of Nick Pinto and/or Chris Robbins to me stylistically, but I enjoy how Hell Gate does its morning newsletter unsigned, Economist style.


My only logging option is to hire monks to transcribe the subjective experience of watching my machines die as I weep tears of blood.

"The Night Watch", James Mickens for ;login:

Submitted by Shubham.


“Ball hog” is essentially the deep-fried zoomer equivalent of the millennial hypebeast aesthetic.

"The New TikTok Aesthetic Is ‘Ball Hog’", Samuel Hine for New York Magazine

Via Rusty. Perfect in a very cursed sense.


Trumpist energy policy is like if a late-19th-century president banned the development of the light bulb because he thought killing whales for lamp-oil was cool

Seth D. Michaels on Bluesky

Submitted by Kelsey last week but I forgot to add it.


It was a classic American story about men and the things they will do to cheat death (betray their fathers) and how, with enough drugs, you could lose the ability to taste or feel things.

"The Chocolate Conspiracy", Rachel Handler for Grub Street

Submitted by Karen. Separately, goose on Bluesky submitted this sentence from the article:

Polling the average Hersheypark consumer had taught me a lot about individual taste preferences within the increasingly deteriorating conditions of the imperial core and about how hot I could get before I started to weep.


Sometimes I can sense the words for things that come before the things themselves and you are one of the words for things that follow the shape of my mouth and press against all of my organs like the deep end of the swimming pool.

"Portrait of Myself as Gertrude Schiele", Kate Wagner for KEEP PLANNING


I was in the belly of the Peep.

"We’re Learning to Live with Waymos. It’s Going Weird", Molly Fischer for The New Yorker

I like to imagine Molly tickled by this line as she worked on this article.


My new conclusion therefore is as follows: Mr. Bug Goes to Town is both wonderful and incredibly stupid.

Starting Point: 1979-1996, Hayao Miyazaki (translated by Beth Cary and Frederik L. Schodt)


Years ago, eating a bagel was not just a simple pleasure; it was a confrontation.

"The Bagel Takes to the Road", Mimi Sheraton for Time

Submitted by Paul.


But perhaps she has always, more fundamentally, been auditioning for a role as a propagandist for a dusty vision of a bygone postwar United States, whose faintly familiar personae and aging slogans masquerading as common sense—“individual responsibility,” “the American project,” “Alan Dershowitz”—are putting up a well-funded fight against the fiercer energies of the age.

"The Bari Weiss Effect on “60 Minutes”", Vinson Cunningham for The New Yorker

Submitted by Maura.


Having been a remarkably good sport as we dragged her to such famously child-friendly vacations like "A Sheer Cliff Overlooking Icebergs in Greenland" and "Endless Climbing Up and Down Stairs in Florence," we wanted to give her a chance to just be a kid.

"In Purgatory Everyone Likes Crepes: My Time at a Greek All-Inclusive", Mat Duggan for his blog

Submitted by Natalie.


Where Hunter S. Thompson had motorcycle gangs and Halcion, we must content ourselves with mineral rights and hydrocarbons.

"That Time I Tried To Buy an Actual Barrel of Oil", Tracy Alloway for Bloomberg

You just read issue #200 of Perfect Sentences. You can also browse the full archives of this newsletter.

Continue the conversation:
Older → Perfect Sentences, 199
lifewinning.com
Bluesky
Powered by Buttondown, the easiest way to start and grow your newsletter.