Line from S. E. Hinton’s The Outsiders

In our village, folks say God crumbles up the old moon into stars. [Alexander Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich]

At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. [Willa Cather, My Antonia]

If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving one be me. [W. H. Auden, “The More Loving One”]

She was lost in her longing to understand. [Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera]

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. [F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby]

I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded; not with the fanfare of epiphany, but the pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night. [Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner]

He was unheeded, happy, and near to the wild heart of life. [James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man]

Maybe life doesn’t get any better than this, or any worse, and what we get is what we’re willing to find: small wonders where they grow. [Barbara Kingsolver, Small Wonder]

There are days we live as if death were nowhere in the background; from joy to joy to joy, from wing to wing, from blossom to blossom to impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom. [Li-Young Lee, From Blossoms]

Memes, tweets, hashtags–they are but pond scum, written waste, in the sanctuary of great literary lines. The exquisite beauty of a single, well-crafted line! The adrenaline shot that overtakes you when you finally reach the end mark of punctuation, breathless and sorely amazed! And the moment when you unconsciously, selflessly voice the words that give testimony–yet again–to the magnificence of the line: Oh, that I had written this! 

In a small blue notebook my father carried in his pocket while he alternately walked and wrote, I found these words:

My work consisted of my playing with the best writers. Ones who spoke beauties, truths, goodness, who persistently used their best hearts and heads. How those books taught me. How I was fortunate enough to subordinate myself to wise men. And would that I could do it again.

Great lines have the power to command subordination. Written from another’s best heart and head, they say: Read slowly. Read carefully. Here is beauty, truth and goodness. If you let them, these words will carry you from innocence and ignorance to wisdom. My father has it so right here. If we are fortunate and willing enough to subordinate ourselves to these great lines, we will want for little more.

In my life as a teacher and reader, I have read so many great lines. And like my father and others whose work has consisted of playing with the best writers, I discovered early that subordinating myself to these men and women would be my real education. It has been–and continues to be.

In the sanctuary of great lines, it is one thing to take pleasure in a particularly perfect line, but it is quite another to share it with one who intuitively finds the same perfection. When two or more subordinate to such a line, you are walking on holy ground.

For as James Joyce and Gabriel Garcia Marquez write, in the sanctuary of great lines, we may live and move unheeded, happy, and near to the wild heart of life and lost in our longing to understand.  And what could be better than this?