The Sun Also Rises

The Sun Also Rises
by Ernest Hemingway
read: circa 2005
Time 100 Novels, Modern Library #45

Hemingway loved boxing, and I think his writing mimics that sport.  He jabs at you with terse, almost pulp-dialogue, dances around with poetic descriptions of scenery, and then out of nowhere he lands a haymaker that staggers you.

She was looking into my eyes with that way she had of looking that made you wonder whether she really saw out of her own eyes.  They would look on and on after everyone else's eyes in the world would have stopped looking.  She looked as though there were nothing on earth she would not look at like that, and really she was afraid of so many things.

I don't know if there's been a better paragraph written in the English language.