D. A. Hosek

Category: writing

  • Beautiful Sentences: Jeffery Eugenides

    We knew that the girls were our twins, that we existed in space like animals with identical skins, and that they knew everything about us though we couldn’t fathom them at all. We knew, finally, that the girls were really women in disguise, that they understood love and even deathm and that our job was…

  • Beautiful Sentences: Alberto Manguel

    Every reader exists to ensure for a certain book a modest immortality. Reading is, in this sense, a ritual of rebirth. Alberto Manguel, The Library at Night.

  • “MeTube”: The Story Behind the Story

    The genesis of “MeTube” was an actual YouTube video, “Bride Has Massive Hair Wig Out” which initially presented itself as an actual pre-wedding video but was later revealed to be a promotional video for hair care products. Regardless of its veracity, the question that struck me about the video was, What happened after the camera turned…

  • “Q & A”: The Story Behind the Story

    The genesis of “Q & A” was a passing mention in Dava Sobel’s book Galileo’s Daughter, where, when she was discussing the trial of Galileo by the Inquisition, she mentions the surreal effect of the transcript in which all the questions are written in the third person but the answers given are in the first person.…

  • Beautiful Sentences: Jac Jemc

    She filled her clothes the way one fills one’s skin: exactly. Jac Jemc, My Only Wife.

  • Beautiful Sentences: Deborah A. Lott

    In those days my unconscious seemed powerful and mysterious, and I could never tell whether it was moving me towards self-destruction or self-preservation. Deborah A. Lott, “The Daddy Cure.”

  • Beautiful Sentences: Hilary Mantel

    There cannot be new things in England. There can be old things freshly presented, or new things that pretend to be old. To be trusted, new men must forge themselves an ancient pedigree, like Walter’s, or enter into the service of ancient families. Don’t try to go it alone, or they’ll think you’re pirates. Hilary…

  • Beautiful Sentences: Rabih Alameddine

    There are two kinds of people in this world: people who want to be desired, and people who want to be desired so much that they pretend they don’t. Rabih Alameddine, An Unnecessary Woman.

  • Beautiful Sentences: Hilary Mantel

    But she’s turned her face away and she’s crying. She’s not crying for him, because nobody, he thinks, will ever cry for him. God didn’t cut him out that way. She’s crying for her idea of what life should be like: Sunday after church, all the sisters, sisters-in-law, wives kissing and patting, swatting at each…