If Nothing Else, I Will Have at Least Written This Sentence: Sentences from an Unwritten Novel

He was so angry that he sped home and tore up the winning lottery ticket literally right in front of her face.

She rolled her eyes as the sack race contestants bounded toward the finish line like frenzied salmon plunging against the rapids.

The appearance of his fingernails was an indicator of his emotional well being.

How could she pull off a major intervention, bringing the tribe back to a sacred place, if the central component of the plan--the earplugs specifically manufactured for blocking all of the bullshit--hadn't already been properly distributed and inserted?

His inability to take himself too seriously was his best attribute, a gift that lifted the veil , allowing him to see behind the world wide hologram.

Her disillusionment was complete and, thus, she boycotted eating wavy potato chips.

In the photo, he is holding a photo of a photo of himself in a photo.

As she activated the toaster, she thought back to a group of school children she had seen running down the street--recognized them as her kindred spirits--and said to herself, "Tough shit if it's the last Pop Tart."

He scoffed at people who ascribed moral judgments or pop psychology to walking with one's gaze on the ground; it was just another choice, a different perspective.

She turned her anger inward, adding extra sugar to her sugar-coated cereal.

His disgust and contempt for those reckless bastards disturbed the delicate balance of his afternoon tea.

In the good, although often misinterpreted, company of Charles Baudelaire, she believed that Ennui was the most  insidious, ravenous foe, far worse than any virus or malware imaginable.

He maximized his consumption of Happy Meals with the efficiency of our unlikely hero, the shrew.

The very thought of reaching out to her fellow cat lovers made her grimace.

His donuts were now part of an uninvited history.

She slipped.

Vacuuming this priceless shag carpet would have to wait until he was clean-shaven.

She owed him nothing, but he refused to accept it.

Each morning as he peered into the swirling chaos of his mind, he wondered about the probability of isolating the same sentence ad infinitum and shivered.

Her poetry served as a conservative, right wing detection matrix.

His French dictionary couldn't make up for his lack of a grasp of colloquial expressions.

She enjoyed her French toast in the wake of conquered adversities.

He set his bracket down on a park bench, placed a rock upon it, and calmly walked away.

She found the place mats disconcerting.

Listerine's claim to a deeper clean directly influenced his decisions.

Like a beekeeper, he calmed the hive of his apprehension (his mother's trait) with the masking smoke of Stoicism (his father's trait).

They couldn't sabotage her confidence, or good mood; she would thrive like a stubborn hedge of roses in the Valley of Ashes.

The fact that when he looked in the mirror, he still wasn't the spitting image of Ric Ocasek, despite all of the brushing and blow drying--and the skinny tie--was the source of many crestfallen mornings.

When the doorbell rang is when she would close the bathroom door.

He liked airports, naively romanticizing every interesting possibility in life patiently waiting to connect with a flight.

She wouldn't look at him because her eyes were set to incineration.

Her blog where she collected bits she overheard people saying wasn't going so well because her hearing wasn't so hot.

He pictured a mountain of frosted Mini Wheats the size of Mount Holly and knew that in some way it represented his life.

She was intelligent enough to know that at the very least several nations withheld vital information because it compromised sensitive intelligence operations.

He didn't understand why cool shoes enhanced a dull weekend, but he understood that they did.

He had to pay attention in the spring because there was more shit on the sidewalks than on a farm.

She viewed her world through the prism of her children.

The other shoe perpetually loomed in the balance, only ever halving that precarious distance, but the one on the ground with which he had somehow managed to form a solid pact had become a better fit.

She smiled to herself as she dropped the mail on her new desk in her new office which afforded an incredible view of the city thinking, "I will run this place in a manner better than anyone else has ever approached; I will make the world a better place."

Endorphins kicked in whenever he walked up through downtown early in the morning, toward the rising sun, with or without a travel mug of coffee in his hand--it didn't matter.

While mosquitoes were a nuisance, he was more concerned with their collective thoughts; he sensed a conspiracy.

She vowed never to take another four-martini selfie in the pink room.

He recognized that the other impresarios in his dreams were extensions of himself.

She couldn't bring herself to admit she was addicted to sunlight.

Relatively simple machinery, like a parking meter, tested his resolve.

There were times in this technologically driven world when her resistance slipped and the flat screen image of a thing made more sense to her than the actual thing itself.

He felt buoyed to the ceiling in the hubbub of a coney island.

It wasn't her favorite play--was tedious, infuriating beyond endurance, in fact--but the beautifully starched and coiffured waiters in tuxedos (the Great Gatsby Collection) carrying silver trays of pink adult smoothies at the intermission made up for everything in life.

He noticed that his parents always made a sound, a double "m," before they said, "Goodbye," on the phone--echoed it after his mother hung up to experience how it felt.

Her personality was a magic wand, infusing color and helium into the gray, flaccid balloon lives of everyone she met.

After much deliberation--after feeling conflicted for years--he gave in; it turned out that walking away was an option.

Her superior preparations neutralized their vitriolic campaign to assassinate her character.

She had been born with enough determination for them all.

He rallied despite the psychic crush of record-breaking snowfall.

The Suave skin solutions solved her problem.

Everyone behaved the same, no one had aged, a muted sorrow manifested itself as shadow--like the narrowing, dimming screen of an old TV--and for the first time, he could see his whole life in color.

She angered the chairman; it gave her strength.

He didn't know, and he couldn't be sure: the dream had been that lucid.

They had reached an understanding, but it flowed through his fingers like water.

She would have been the first to tell you that she didn't give a damn about Justin Bieber.

He had a pleasant conversation on the elevator, albeit a little awkward, with the security escort.

She knelt under the weight of too many lessons.

The deeply saturated vibrancy of the afternoon sky matched the hue of his vest, seemed like a by-product of his imagination.

Standing still as possible on the footpath so as not to startle the young deer, she realized that it wasn't a messenger; it was waiting for a message.

All symbols pointed to him.

How, she wondered, could one discover the antidote if the poison remained so elusive.

He left the game on downstairs during lovemaking because after crossing a certain line it became conceivable that the roaring fans were cheering his performance.

Ultimately, his legacy would revolve around chocolate pudding, primitive robotics and practices in the mainstreaming of social networking interventions.

On the first day of spring, her biorhythms performed a horizontal flip, as if her moods were being Photoshopped.

Although he was totally uninterested in the subject, especially in breakfast terms, his expertise lay in toast reform.

The approval of the previews for all audiences only instilled a semblance of confidence and well-being within her.

He peered into the canyon of disconnect between their lives and the war and vowed to become a better listener.

No longer preoccupied with sex, she replaced her former anxiety with a preoccupation of the absence of her preoccupation with sex.

Secretly, he was pleased that Paramore was featured on the soundtrack, and longed to dye his hair.

After the semi fell on her car in the second act, the uncommonly frigid theater of winter weather didn't bother her one iota.

He worried that the next generation would be offended that he enjoyed their music and slang as much as they did.

From the rooftop, he looked out over the city, his eyes following an undulating wave of pigeons on the jet stream between the buildings as he contemplated the imminent, disturbing loss he felt certain to experience when physical mail no longer arrived in a three-dimensional mailbox.

She often thought about the active American voice.

He didn't want to believe that the thoughts which floated through his mind like space junk were the debris of a well-ordered universe because it contradicted his belief in chance and chaos.

Morally, it was indefensible, but the board was morally bankrupt; her confidence soared.

She was so cynical, she wouldn't eat the marshmallow hearts in a bowl of Lucky Charms,  her favorite cereal.

Even though the modern complexities of a car were completely foreign, he felt confident that he could skillfully drive one over a cliff, which, he believed, would uncomplicate most of his problems.