Sublime

Your opening sentence should be the most memorable—tell me something I don’t know, would want to know, should know. Make this sentence as direct, short and sharp as possible.

“Teach ’em.” — Steve Brouse, my friend and colleague, who said this to a teacher who was complaining that her students didn’t already know something

Algren, and Bourjaily, and was very taken by my best student, Ian MacMillan. He promised to do his best to get Harper’s Magazine to publish something of Ian’s. You ask me to tell you of any good students in my

I’m all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let’s start with typewriters. —Frank Lloyd Wright

“none of us who toil for our daily bread are free. At one time…we were chattel slaves; today we are, one and all, white and black, wage slaves.”

Wilson . . . sent in American troops in 1915. United States marines occupied Haiti until 1934.”

came within feet of running us both

“Professors,” Mr. Flogg murmured in a tone recognizable to anyone who has had an essay returned to them covered in red ink.