the only sentence that matters.

At first the idea was just a slowly creeping suspicion, but I have become convinced that all books, whether short stories, poems, prose, plays, essays, novels, fact or fiction, merely exist to give meaningful context to one beautiful sentence.

[theonlysentencethatmatters]

People like her grow up in a small town and get the same kind of cruel ideas fed to them their entire lives, and they wrap it up in their worldview because that's the context they understand.

Ohio by Stephen Markley

[theonlysentencethatmatters]

I felt the secret urge children have to become lost and stay overnight somewhere good, like a museum or mall, as a way of being there privately, directly.

Bandit, by Molly Brodak

[theonlysentencethatmatters]

You know, it's one of the best things about growing up, when you realize you're pretty much as smart as anybody.

A Good and Happy Child by Justin Evans

[theonlysentencethatmatters]

But we all know the spine of a book tends to crack where you've read it most, even if it was so long ago it now seems unfamiliar, from the inside-out.

Experimental Film by Gemma Files

[theonlysentencethatmatters]

A town has a feeling, I remembered someone telling me long ago, because certain kinds of thought are contagious

Pew by Catherine Lacey

[theonlysentencethatmatters]

I watched the greatest minds of my generation do whip-its in a Big Lots parking lot.

College Novel by Blake Middleton

[theonlysentencethatmatters]

The way we experience the world seems unnecessarily beautiful unnecessarily rich and strange. . .

The Conspiracy Against the Human Race by Thomas Ligotti

[theonlysentencethatmatters]

Soon, you'll have your own beautiful boy or girl who will look at you with their perfect little face and you'll feel love and hope and, mostly, you'll feel the weight of everything that's ever happened to you and everything that will ever happen to them and you'll want to run.

Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier

[theonlysentencethatmatters]

What quantity of truth resides within a story's details?

Saint X by Alexis Shaitkin

[theonlysentencethatmatters]

The truth never makes sense unless you force it to, just like anything.

Negative Space by B.R. Yeager

[theonlysentencethatmatters]

What a live-in lover offers you, ultimately, is the unprecedented revelation of not being alone.

Last Night in Montreal by Emily St.John Mandel

[theonlysentencethatmatters]

Perhaps it boils down to one question: "Am I sick, or is the world outside my window sick?"

A Sick Gray Laugh by Nicole Cushing

[theonlysentencethatmatters]

He has a soft spot for freaks, for certain people he can identify with, and he love to curl up in their strangeness.

Pretty Things by Virginie Despentes

[theonlysentencethatmatters]

People come down with things all the time, and even if they survive they end up strange.

Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin

[theonlysentencethatmatters]

What I forgot is that I'm human too.

Hesitation Wounds, Amy Koppelman

[theonlysentencethatmatters]

With our swollen new eyes, we saw the blood and knew it was a mantle.

[theonlysentencethatmatters]

Suddenly she wants to do all the brand new things.

King of Joy, by Richard Chiem