Clear water over granite

Paris Review asks Joan Didion who she reads and she answers:

I always say Hemingway, because he taught me how sentences worked. When I was fifteen or sixteen I would type out his stories to learn how the sentences worked. ... A few years ago when I was teaching a course at Berkeley I reread A Farewell to Arms and fell right back into those sentences. Very direct sentences, smooth rivers, clear water over granite, no sinkholes.