It may take a whole book....

The passage from Lamott that I want to talk about today is on page 103. He states that, "There may be a flickering moment of insight in a one-liner, in a sound bite, but everyday meat-and-potato truth is beyond our ability to capture in a few words. Your piece is the truth, not just one shining epigrammatic moment in it."
I thought that this quote was very powerful because so many stories have pages beyond pages of mindless writing and then attempt to capture the hearts of their audience in one sentence at the very end. Lamott explains that it takes a whole book sometimes to get that moral message across to the reader and a good story will have the depth and consistency that will allow the reader to feel what he is trying to convey.
I think that this message is really important for new writers because I have noticed in the middle school that I have been in the last few months that a lot of the students will write 3 pages about a toy wagon and end the story with, "and the lesson I learned is to always be nice to others". Although, the story was very interesting and the moral very nice, there is no connection between the two to make it very powerful at all. I think Lamott has something when he says, "The core, ethical concepts in which you most passionately believe are the language in which you are writing". Your message should come from your whole piece, not the ending sentences.