A dependent clause (a sentence fragment set off by commas, dontcha know) helps you explore your story by moving you deeper into the sentence. It allows you to stop and think harder about what you've already written. Often the story you're looking for is inside the sentence. The dependent clause helps you uncover it.

It was only natural to want to destroy something you could never have.

Do you ever want to go home?' I asked Paul. He brushed an ash from my face. 'It's the century of the displaced person,' he said. 'You can never go home.

As a person with terrible handwriting, I love the computer. I've waited all my life for the computer.

My loneliness tasted like pennies.

But that was the thing about zero. Its weakness. Even if zero had taken over the entire universe, the biggest fascist of all, one tiny gesture could deny it. One footprint, one atom. You didn't have to be a genius. You didn't even have to know that was what you were doing. You made a mark. You changed something. It said, "A human being passed here." And changed zero to one.

without my wounds, who was I? My scars were my face, my past was my life.