What answers will we get from the book?
Hear the answer from the master

A collection of essays by 32 great writers, including Stephen King, Elizabeth Gilbert, Viet Thanh Nguyen, and Hanya Yanagihara, has been published, titled "Life Sentences."
This book is a compilation of prose responses from leading figures in English and American literature to the question, “Choose the one passage from literature that most strongly struck your mind.”
Authors pick out passages from literature and honestly explain why they are important and how they have influenced them.
It contains a variety of stories about sentences and literature, from sentences that I came across inadvertently in a book I read as a child and kept in my heart my whole life, to sentences that became a breakthrough when I faced difficult questions such as identity or a crossroads in life when I was at a dead end, or when I felt lost when writing.
This essay, which features the stories of the most beloved authors at the forefront of Anglo-American literature, including those from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Ireland, will inspire empathy and a love for literature in book lovers, and provide insight to those seeking to confront life's questions and gain insight.

As I collected additional writing to complete this book, I felt like a perpetual student.
I learned about not only creative writing and literature, but also sociology, psychology, and political science.
It was like having exclusive access to a new, great teacher every week.
While this was enjoyable, it was also vague because even though I asked all the writers the same questions, the answers were so varied and rich that I couldn't find a single theme that would encompass them all.
It was a difficult task, almost as difficult as choosing one favorite sentence from among the many, many pieces of writing I love.
Then suddenly the road came into view.
As the authors in this book often do when they hit a dead end, they find a breakthrough in another book.
--- pp.7-8 From "Introduction"

As someone who always struggles with anxiety and lack of courage, I am deeply moved by the sheer dedication that allows me to feel wonder in the face of pain and adversity.
Anything becomes a puzzle if you can do that.
The disaster is just a dramatically heightened puzzle.
When I encounter obstacles in my writing, the best approach for me is to cling to stubborn joy.
In fact, writing is a very dramatic pursuit, full of tragedy, disaster, emotion, and failure.
Once I learned to view the pain of things not going well as a tragedy, rather than a miracle, my path as a writer became much easier.
--- pp.26-27 From "Elizabeth Gilbert, I Want to Be a Person Like This Sentence"

A novel cannot be something that I find acceptable and at the same time something that everyone can accept.
--- p.156 From "William Gibson, How to Cut the Perfect First Sentence"

The effect this book has had on me is part of an osmosis process that has been going on for decades.
This is the result of reading countless books and absorbing the writing styles of countless authors, consciously and unconsciously.
Some books are especially precious.
I always keep books by authors whose styles and stories I want to emulate and steal close by.
Then I came across 『The End of the World』.
This book seemed to speak most closely and intimately to me about how I see myself as a writer and how I see my narrator as a character.
It was the culmination of everything that had influenced and inspired me for so long.
--- p.193 From “Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Most Powerful Sympathizer of ‘The Sympathizer’”

It's hard to say exactly what I'm pursuing in my books, but one of them is to broaden our understanding of the world.
That can happen through characters.
A person like Karenin is probably someone I could never get to know deeply in real life.
You could meet someone like Karenin, but you would have nothing to talk to, and you would both find each other boring and unpleasant.
But books like Anna Karenina take us beyond the dull, ordinary facade and allow us to meet the real person beneath the surface.

--- p.231 From "Mary Gaitskill, A Sentence That Made Me Jump Up"

Isn't the tension between the desire to linger, savoring a sentence, and the desire to know what happens next, the very essence of fiction?
You have to keep reading to reach the end of the book.
Especially if it's a long book like Our Common Friend.
But something grabs me, holds me back, and keeps me from moving forward.
Because of this experience, I love novels more than any other form of art.
When reading poetry, it is natural to read slowly.
If a poem has 100 words, you have to pay attention to each and every word.
But when you read a novel, you have to keep moving.
Yet, when a certain sentence catches your eye, you resist the movement to move forward.
--- pp.236-237 From "Jane Smiley, What Lasts the Longest in a Novel?"

What we write are the pieces that hold up our ruins.
The scraps of words written on paper will outlive us.
Like the debris from a tsunami that washes up on the other side of the ocean, writing is something that can be salvaged and saved.
Of course, there are other ways to leave a mark.
If you are rich, you can leave behind a library, a building, or a hospital.
But writing leaves behind a concrete sense of what it was like to live in this world at a particular time.
Writing tells us what it means to be human.
--- p.261 From "This Piece Supports My Ruins" by Claire Methode

Because literature is created when a writer takes a big leap forward.
Whether it's plot, character, structure, tone, or language, a book must take a risk in at least one way.
--- p.287 From "Hanya Yanagihara, Dissecting Language and Savoring Its Inner Vitality"

I considered the magical act of what seemed like an escape to be a path to encountering myself and my problems to be a fundamental principle of reading and novels.
In this way, the portal in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe becomes an excellent metaphor for reading itself.
Lucy opening the closet door is like opening the cover of a book and going through it to another place.
It's the same experience that happens to the reader when he reads that passage.
The reader sees Lucy doing the same thing she does in a dramatic and transformed way.
(Omitted) To me, the closet door seemed to open like a book, pulling Lucy and the readers into a new world of imagination.
I want to be that kind of writer.
A writer who allows readers to pass seamlessly from the real world to the fantasy world, and from real life to the world of reading, without any obstacles.
--- pp.307-308 From "Lev Grossman, How to Create Magic Without Casting Magic"

The author believes that by arranging words in a certain order, he can transport the reader to another world.
It can make you feel something, experience a sensation, and draw out something deep within your imagination.
However, we cannot systematically explain how this happens.
So to speak, 'If you want to write a good short story, you have to do this.
This is how you can write a good novel.
If it's literature, you can't talk about it like, 'It should be like this, it shouldn't be like that.'
We can debate this topic, but just because a method worked doesn't mean we can just repeat it.
The way the book is put together is beyond words.
The fact that I know so little about this process, yet am infinitely drawn to it, is what keeps me coming back.
--- p.345 From "Ben Marcus, The Ecstatic Mixture of Fear and Beauty"

I thought it would be nice to be able to take out this poem and read it at any moment in my life.
So I memorized the poem.
I wanted to have a writing tool that would help me think about and express how I was feeling, whether I was having a hard time or was happy.
The more articles like this, the better.
Our memories of books are generally vague.
A phrase that I cherished fades from my memory and then disappears.
Memorization was a way for me to force a more precise and permanent relationship with the text.
When you memorize a text, some mysterious structure enters your mind and boils inside.
When I touch this language, which has been crafted so intricately, my heart races and I realize, 'Art can do even this.'
I also experienced physical reactions.
I felt drunk on caffeine.
And that feeling lasted a very long time.

--- pp.251-252 From "Amy Bender, A Life Sentence I Met at a Funeral"