Sentence No. 1 · 28 March 2026
I have been bent and broken, but — I hope — into a better shape.
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
Charles Dickens — Great Expectations (1861) · Read it at Project Gutenberg
What holds this sentence together
The dashes around "I hope" mark a parenthetical interruption — a aside dropped into the middle of a clause. When you spot two dash phrases flanking a short phrase, that phrase belongs inside the surrounding clause, never at its edges.
How it appears in Sentle
On Sentle this sentence arrives in 6 pieces, shuffled, with the lines that lead up to it for context. A man looks back on a life marked by hardship — and by the woman who first taught him what it means to suffer. Putting it back in the author’s order is the puzzle — and the order is rarely arbitrary, which is what the note above is about.
A new sentence from a great book, every day.
Play today’s sentenceFree, no account. Or play this one — it will give the answer away.