Only the best lines in Esquire
Esquire has always been my favourite read for over a decade now. I had only one grouse. It was always so expensive that I had to beg and borrow at the only library in the city that stocked the magazine down the years. What made my worrylines even more prominent was that I would always end up with some old issue because the latest would almost always be borrowed by someone else.
The online version didn’t help me there either. In fact, it was no ‘version’. It was merely reproducing the cover page and contents page online, so people would get curious enough to buy the mag off the stands. For years, this story repeated itself. I would go online, but never get to read any story. Only the headline and the sub head. Therefore, I was left with no option but to knock on the doors of my library time and again.
But not anymore.
The Esquire guys have listened and I don’t have to take the long road. All I need is to log online and read all of my favourite magazine. What I find most enjoyable is the chance to re-read all the wonderful stories I enjoyed reading.
Like Tom Junod’s THE FALLING MAN, about the man in a newspaper picture throwing himself down the window of The World Trade Centre when Bin Laden decided to punish America. Or his January 2008 profile, HILLARY CLINTON HAS A SEXY MOUTH.
There is a certain gravitas Esquire writers like Junod bring to the story all too consistently and tirelessly that distill journalistic wisdom collected over the years. But what is even more evident is the way they approach celebrities. They rubbish them and eulogise them in the same breath. And yet, you come away feeling like you’ve gained some earth-shattering wisdom yourself.
All balls.
What the magazine actually does is make you feel good about yourself and the world around you. The writers expose the movers and shakers with an eye towards making you feel that life is not really greener on the other side. And if it is, there are too many obstacles that a mere mortal like you and I can never overcome. If the writers elevate the glitterati and thinkerati to the heavens, they also bring them down with a thud that could imbalance your ear bone. In the end, you are happy. For having survived the read. An enjoyable one at that. That’s Esquire. Profiling ‘man at his best’.
And so it was when I wandered around in cyberspace and found myself on the front end of Esquire’s online edition. Was I surprised? Like an elephant in heat, I pillaged forth and soaked it all in one breath. During the three-hour reading session, one story smacked me in the face with its intellectual sweep. It was a compilation of the best 70 sentences ever published in Esquire’s 70-year history that “sparkle, invoke, provoke, or are just damn enjoyable to read”. Want to know my favourite lines among them? Here they are…
* He is lousy at alone. –Bill Zehme, “The Man Who Loved Women,” 1998
* Now he would never write the things that he had saved to write until he knew enough to write them well. - Ernest Hemingway, “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” 1936
* So deeply imbedded was she in my consciousness that for the first few years of school I believed that each of my teachers was actually my mother in disguise. –Philip Roth, “A Jewish Patient Begins His Analysis,” 1967
* They are a curious mixture of Spanish tradition, American imitation and insular limitation. –Helen Lawrenson, “Latins Are Lousy Lovers,” 1936
* Bust, bosom, boobs, babaloos, beanbags, buds, bulbs, balcony, balloons, bangers, bazongas, bazooms, baseballs, beach balls, berthas, bettys, beausom, beauts, begonias, big brown eyes, bits, blubbers, bobbers, BB’s, bonbons, boom-booms, bongos, bings, bounty, the Bobsy twins, bottles, boulders, bikini filler, brassiere food, breastices, bosiasm, bubbles, bubbies, buddies, bozos, bee stings, bullets, bumps, buffers, bumpers, busters, best friends, bug bites, butter-bags, the baby bar–that’s fifty just in the b’s, and we probably missed one or two. –Larry Doyle, Esky, 1999
* Negroes want to be treated like men: a perfectly straightforward statement, containing only seven words. –James Baldwin, “Fifth Avenue, Uptown,” 1960
* When a writer does well, the rest of the country is doing fine. –John Steinbeck, “A Primer on the 30’s,” 1960
* A child is a territory, a landscape, a region, an outpost, a republic and island of worry. –Alec Wilkinson, “Sam and Other Reflections on Being a Father,” 2000
* We decided to spend a few minutes analyzing our motives–something we often do when there’s nothing good on television. –Calvin Trillin, “A Day at the Spaces,” 1977
* She is cute as a button, pretty as a picture, eminently fuckable, totally unavailable. –Mike Sager, “Beautiful,” 1999
Want to pick your own favourites and go through the entire piece in Esquire, then you can go here… ESQUIRE’S 70 GREATEST SENTENCES
