20 Magical Sentences No Artificial Intelligence Could Ever Dream To Write
Beautiful lines to inspire your writing
Hey Friends,
I’ve been working on a very long piece that has drained a lot of my brain power.
So… I’m going to cheat a little this week and give you a listicle.
Let’s begin the show, shall we?
Words are so magical.
I love how words can make rage pulse through your veins or ache with sympathy. I love words that twist your heart and push you to the depths of your misery. I love words that crinkle your face in laughter or flood your soul with sunshine.
But let me tell you about something stupid.
Last week in my weekly Atomic Habits group, we somehow ended up discussing artificial intelligence (AI) copywriting software and the future of content writing.
My friend and fellow copywriter, Jake, expressed how he was blown away by it and knows it will get better with time.
I’ve played around with one program. The speed at which AI copy vomits out more words than any human could ever hope to type is impressive. Well done software engineers.
However, we both agreed that there’s still something missing behind them. The content we’ve come across felt hollow and sterile.
So I remain hopeful that my vocation will always remain intact because I’ve got something AI doesn’t: emotions.
But we’re going to be seeing a lot more of AI. As the price of AI becomes cheaper to use, more and more people are going to use it to “solve” a pain point – the pain of writing. We’re going to see more word diarrhoea produced on the internet.
Look, that’s not writing. That’s typing. And there’s a difference.
You can type words, or you can write words infused with art that hook you in by the mouth and tug on your heartstrings.
And when I read something that reels me in and invokes an emotion, I save those.
Here are some of my favourite, greatest, buttery sentences I’ve collected from books I’ve read, videos I’ve watched, and writers I’ve admired.
“I can’t describe to you the sheer pleasure, the power of commanding that monstrous, fire-breathing iron and steel furnace, bumping the grill under the flames with my hip the way I’d seen Bobby and Jimmy do it.”
— Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain
“No one knew quite what it was, but my hormone levels had declared insanity, and I was suddenly allergic to just about everything.”
— The Biggest Bluff, Maria Konnikova
“My heart broke on its shame and sorrow. I suddenly knew how much crying there was in me, and how little love. I knew, at last, how lonely I was.”
— Shantaram, Gregory David Roberts
“I heard her voice in every lovely sound the wind wrapped around me. I saw her face in brilliant mirrored flares of memory, every day.”
— Shantaram, Gregory David Roberts
“My ego is in free fall while my superego is boundless, railing that my existence is not enough, never enough, so I become compulsive in my efforts to do better, be better, blindly following this country’s gospel of self-interest, proving my individual worth by expanding my net worth, until I vanish.”
— Minor Feelings, Cathay Park Hong
“...in time of war, normal citizens were nothing but leaves that would fall in the thousands or millions in the surge of a single storm.”
— The Mountains Sing, Nguyen Phan Que Mai
“If you bear grudges, you’re the one who’ll have to bear the burden of sorrow.”
— The Mountains Sing, Nguyen Phan Que Mai
“Sometimes being offered tenderness feels like the very proof that you've been ruined.”
— On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, Ocean Vuong
“Outside, the leaves fell, fat and wet as dirty money, across the windows.”
— On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, Ocean Vuong
“Beauty belongs to the impermanent. We cherish the most the things we can lose.”
— The Nerdwriter
“Out in the cold. The snow falls in thick delightful heaps as if God himself is brushing flour from his hands.”
— Cole Schafer
“I’m not perfect. I step in shit all the time and recognize when I do. I’ve just learned how to scrape it off my boots and carry on.”
— Greenlights, Matthew McConaughey
“Life has to win every day. Death only has to win once.”
— Roy Baumeister
“I remember reading Drinking: A Love Story many, many years ago. Folding over every page that sounded like me until the book was a mirror of me, and the moment I lose hours of time — what happened, I can’t remember, the forensics begin— is the moment I’m done.”
— Felicia Sulivan
“That you can blow a man & your voice speaks through his voice.”
— Time Is A Mother, Ocean Vuong
“Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it.”
— Joan Didion
“Your eyes show the strength of your soul.”
― The Alchemist, Paul Coelho
“It slammed me shut like a book, sent me crawling to the bathroom shitting like a mink, clutching my stomach and projectile vomiting. I prayed that night. For many hours. And, as you might assume, I’m the worst kind of atheist.”
— Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain
“...she started to feel unmoored, thrust into what became a lifelong quest for meaning.”
— Bittersweet, Susan Cain
“In my experience the opposite to addiction isn’t sobriety, it’s purpose. Once you’ve got something to do and someone to be, your ‘why’, the need to distract yourself diminishes.”
— Before & Laughter, Jimmy Carr
AI can fill up the internet, but it will never fill up my heart.
— Jason Vu Nguyen
Loved this! And of course you included Ocean Vuong - he's a magician with his words.