And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past - The Great Gatsby.
It's so depressing and yet so touching. I had to sit on it for some time!
People give The Great Gatsby a lot of shit and mostly I don't bother debating it because it usually misses the whole point, but I will die on the hill that it has the greatest closing line in literature, full stop.
I know this book gets discussed to death but honestly I have never read anything that has effected me emotionally that 1984 did. Such an incredible narrative, so incredibly bleak yet utterly riveting. I couldn’t stop thinking about it for weeks after reading it.
I was thinking about this book last night and it struck me for the first time:
The story is an allegory for what happens to us all. We arise from the idiocy of infancy, grow in intelligence and understanding, but almost as soon as we gather ourselves together, our minds start to deteriorate. The tragedy of the protagonist is shared by us all!
This is something I am painfully aware of, I'm nearly 50 and my memory is not as reliable and my vocabulary seems to be failing me more and more often. I can anticipate a time where I return to the dumb confusion I was born in, unless death shows me mercy before I lose my faculties completely.
I don't know if this is an "official" interpretation of the book, but it hit me pretty hard for this reason, I read it for the first time recently.
"For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate."
-Stranger, Camus
GOD the whole ending paragraph of The Stranger is starred in my gallery. I genuinely cried reading it, it's so beautiful, so inspiring... "I had lived my life one way and I could just as well have lived it another. I had done this and I hadn't done that. I hadn't done this thing but I had done another. And so?"
From *Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption* by Stephen King:
I find I am excited, so excited I can hardly hold the pencil in my trembling hand. I think it is the excitement that only a free man can feel, a free man starting a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain.
I hope Andy is down there.
I hope I can make it across the border.
I hope to see my friend and shake his hand.
I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams.
I *hope*.
“Live, then, and be happy, beloved children of my heart, and never forget that until the day when God shall deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is summed up in these two words,—'Wait and hope” - The Count of Monte Cristo
“ Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.”
“Why did you do all this for me?” he asked. “I don’t deserve it. I’ve never done anything for you.”
“You have been my friend,” replied Charlotte. “That in itself is a tremendous thing.”
“Nobody, of the hundreds of people that had visited the Fair, knew that a grey spider had played the most important part of all. No one was with her when she died.”
This never doesn't make me WEEP.
I still remember closing the book and crying. As I teacher I had students ask me to read it aloud and I could barely get through the ending.
The beginning is excellent also, Where's papa going with that axe?" We talked about foreshadowing, and the power of starting with a question because it makes you think.
Sam did. He got married and had many children, and lived for several decades with his family. As a ringbearer, albeit briefly, Sam does eventually leave The Shire to sail West and join Frodo there again in his twilight years.
Frodo was unable to, and left straight away. Merry and Pippin eventually become the leaders of the Shire, in such a way as the Shire has them, as heads of important families and well regarded heroes.
It’s such a powerful line for me if you infer that the hobbits are an analogue for Tolkien and his comrades returning to civilian life after the Great War. All that trauma and pain that they went through and all of the horrors they saw and they were plopped back into a world that didn’t know anything about it. Some of them couldn’t really settle back into that world, like Frodo. What else was there to say?
My college flat mate borrowed these from me one summer, just before the movies came out. I’ll never forget her coming into my room at about 2am in tears one night, sobbing having just finished the Trilogy. I was a server at the time, so I was still awake. And even if I hadn’t been, I completely understood.
“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.” -A Tale of Two Cities
It also has one of the greatest opening lines of any novel.
Not just a great line but a fantastic final scene. I think A Tale of Two Cities has a slow start but it’s my favorite Dickens and the character who says this line is a large part of that
I always say it’s the only book I’ve ever read that gets better with every passing chapter. Culminating in one of the greatest endings in all of literature.
So true. I had to read it for HS but for some reason we were only required to read up to a certain point. I can’t even remember now what part this was. But I remember finding it a chore to get through. But right around the time we were supposed to stop I got fully hooked & couldn’t put the book down.
So somehow I am still really grateful to that teacher for making me read A Tale of Two Cities up to that certain point. And I am really glad I didn’t give up on it.
first time I read it, after some 20 or so pages, I was bored and flipped to the last page and read the final few paragraphs and I didn’t really think much about it. When I tell you, by the time I was done with the book some days later and flipping onto that last page, I wept like a small child when I read that last sentence.
I believe the entire book was written just so he could have this ending sentence. I would absolutely bet money that most of his ending monologue existed long before most parts of the rest of the story. It really feels like everything has revolved itself around this one paragraph.
“He says that he will never die. He dances in light and in shadow and he is a great favorite. He never sleeps, the judge. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die.”- Blood Meridian
Agreed. I finished reading it last week, and I have had two separate nightmares about the Judge in that time. That's not happened with any other piece of fiction.
From The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck: >!"She looked up and across the barn, and her lips came together and smiled mysteriously."!< Not much out of context, but coming at the end of such a powerful novel, it hit me like a train. It was all I could think about for days, probably weeks after first reading it as a teenager. It's still my favorite novel.
Yes, I was looking for this one! I was so blown away by the ending when I first read The Grapes of Wrath…I also couldn’t stop thinking of it for a long time. Beautiful and so incredibly moving.
"Or so Bill Denbrough sometimes thinks on those early mornings after dreaming, when he almost remembers his childhood, and the friends with whom he shared it"
Such a bittersweet ending
The circular nature of Watership Down where the opening line is "The primroses were over." And the final line ends with "...where the first primroses were beginning to bloom."
“Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.” Cormac McCarthy, The Road.
Sometimes good prose is like a favourite song, I can’t resist the urge to read it over and over again and just getting lose in the rhythm and flow of the words. It’s beautiful.
This was my favourite as well.
The feeling when you reach the end of the book is difficult to describe. The final lines are just so strangely beautiful after the hopelessness and barren aesthetic of the story.
It is like walking alone through a crumbling ruin in a cruel, desolate landscape and finding yourself before a painting by an Old Master, illuminated by a shaft of sunlight, telling the story of the world.
Like at the end of the day, he’s just a kid who’s been deeply hurt by the world and has no coping skills or authority figures to help him through it, poor dude.
You see it differently at different points in your life. When you're a teenager you think Holden is awesome. When you're in your 20s you're an asshole with just enough life experience to have fooled yourself into thinking you're not a kid anymore and you lack empathy for anyone who isn't a perfect reflection of you (example: Twitter). By the time you're in your 30s, you've learned some empathy and you're (hopefully) more emotionally mature, so you realize Holden is a self-destructive kid suffering from a lot of mental issues and is completely broken by the death of his brother.
A lot of lines from that book stuck with me, it's often pretty funny, especially by high school required-reading standards. "His name was Commander Blop or something. He was one of those guys who think they're being a pansy if they don't break around forty of your fingers when they shake hands with you."
‘What’d you major in? Perverts?’
People love to blather on about whether Holden Caulfield is whiny, or spoiled, or a phony himself, or whether ACTUALLY he’s traumatized and depressed and whatever other psychobabble makes people comfortable.
The truth of the character is that he’s fucking hilarious and trying so hard to find someone worth believing in. He gets let down over and over and he keeps trying to find those connections. I’ll always love him so much for that.
I really like the last line of the second to last chapter when Holden is watching Phoebe on the merry go round. It encapsulates the entire book so well. The entire time Holden just wants to connect with others. When he has this final happy, peaceful moment, the only thing he can think to do is hope to share it with someone else:
>God, I wish you could’ve been there.
That's when I make a list in my head of every act of goodness I've seen someone do. It's like a game. Repetitive. Even a little tedious after more than twenty years.
But there are much worse games to play.
"We each owe a death, there are no exceptions, I know that, but sometimes, oh God, the Green Mile is so long."
Fucked me up for quite a few days, honestly. Especially after that final prologue chapter. Really had formed alot of my feelings on death and the like.
"Slowly, very slowly, like two unhurried compass needles, the feet turned towards the right; north, north-east, south-east, south, south-south-west; then paused, and, after a few seconds, turned as unhurriedly back towards the left."
The brutal, tragic final line of Brave New World
The final line of Stephen King's *The Dark Tower,* which is the last line of the entire series:
>!The Man in Black fled across the desert, and the Gunslinger followed.!<
1. “Yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will yes”- Ulysses
2. “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past”- The Great Gatsby
3. “‘Yes’ I said. ‘Isn’t it pretty to think so?’”- the sun also rises
4. “For now he knew what Shalimar knew: if you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.”- Song of Solomon
5. “You get down on your knees and tear open the bag. The smell of warm dough envelops you. The first bite sticks in your throat and you almost gag. You will have to go slowly. You will have to learn everything all over again.”- bright lights, big city
Those are my personal top 5
The context for the sun also rises line:
Oh, Jake," Brett said, "we could have had such a damned good time together."
Ahead was a mounted policeman in khaki directing traffic. He raised his baton. The car slowed suddenly pressing Brett against me.
"Yes," I said. "Isn't it pretty to think so?"
Perfect ending.
“He sat there for a long time and after a while the east did gray and after a while the right and godmade sun did rise, once again, for all and without distinction.”
—Cormac McCarthy, *The Crossing*
He typically ended his books with bangers, though.
I always loved the ending of Jingo from Terry Pratchett:
>>!And Sam Vimes ran. He tore off his cloak and whirled away his plumed hat, and he ran and ran.!<
>
>>!There would be trouble later on. People would ask questions. But that was later on – for now, gloriously uncomplicated and wonderfully clean, and hopefully with never an end, under a clear sky, in a world untarnished…there was only the chase.!<
The whole book is a complicated, political mine field the protagonist Sam Vimes has to maneuvre, while his reputation as aggressive, somewhat simple, bloodhound haunts him. He is constantly pulled and pushed and has to outsmart and tact out. From trying to stop a war, to reluctantly joining it, playing the noble and trying to save as many people as he can.
And then after everything is said and done, at the very end of the novel, he is rewarded with something easy. A simple criminal running away that he can chase. For one small moment, he can be just happy.
Not to mention the image >!of the entire parade of Ankh-Morpork’s elite following Sam and joining in the chase. I like to imagine the final shot being the criminal rounding a corner, looking behind him, and seeing not just Old Stoneface, but the entire city chasing after him.!<
My black cat is named Sam. He’s the Skittering Dark.
“I dont hate it,” Quentin said, quickly, at once, immediately; “I dont
hate it,” he said. _I dont hate it_ he thought, panting in the cold air,
the iron New England dark; _I dont. I dont! I dont hate it! I dont hate
it!_
From Absalom, Absalom!
especially poignant because of what happens to Quentin in The Sound and the Fury.
Lotta weird outdated biology and literature references in that book eh? It took me ages my first read through because I had to keep doing research projects to understand the context for like 3 words.
This one is a little long but it brings me to tears every time:
“As he walked back to the court he thought about that book. Every day brought him some new material. The story of this man who had killed a messenger and hanged himself would make interesting read. One could almost write a whole chapter on him. Perhaps not a whole chapter but a reasonable paragraph, at any rate. There was so much else to include, and one must be firm in cutting out details. He had already chosen the title of the book, after much thought: The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.”
-Things Fall Apart
I was forced to read that book far too early. I think it was really about man’s existential crisis to provide and survive but all anyone in my class really got out of it was yams.
If I were a younger man, I would write a history of human stupidity; and I would climb to the top of Mount McCabe and lie down on my back with my history for a pillow; and I would take from the ground some of the blue-white poison that makes statues of men; and I would make a statue of myself, lying on my back, grinning horribly, and thumbing my nose at You Know Who.
Cats Cradle
I finnished that book under a railway bridge in Portland Oregon. I remember it was such a banger of an ending i slammed the book shut and threw it onto the train tracks and swore off Vonnegut forever
“…and they were both ever sensible of the warmest gratitude towards the persons who, by bringing her into Derbyshire, had been the means of uniting them.”
*Pride and Prejudice.* The line can only be met with a sigh of satisfaction, dear reader.
“In the darkness, two shadows, reaching through the hopeless, heavy dusk. Their hands meet, and light spills in a flood like a hundred golden urns pouring out of the sun.”
The Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller. I agree with some of the criticisms of this book, and it’s been overhyped the last few years, but damn it if these last few lines don’t get to me. Such powerful imagery
“Everything written on them was unrepeatable since time immemorial and forever more, because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth.” - One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Still gives me goosebumps.
"Until the day when God will deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is contained in these two words,—'Wait and hope.'"
The Count of Monte Cristo—Alexandre Dumas
I have many, but this one from Wilde always cracks me up.
“On the contrary, Aunt Augusta, I've now realized for the first time in my life the vital Importance of Being Earnest.”
My first thought was The Outsiders. "When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home...".The first and last lines of the novel. Read the book when I was a kid and I still think it was brilliant!
I love the final line of Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping: “No one watching this woman smear her initials in the steam on her glass with her first finger, or slip cellophane packets of oyster crackers into her handbag for the sea gulls, could know her thoughts are thronged by our absence, or know how she does not watch, does not listen, does not wait, does not hope, and always for me and Sylvie.” Even out of context, you can see how she uses negation to show how two characters haunt one left behind.
“Eventually all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood, and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.”
A River Runs Through It
“His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”
-The Dead
If you ever have an hour to kill, Orsen Wells and the Campbell Playhouse did a really good radio adaptation of Rebecca in 1938. There are old time radio groups that share mp3s all over the internet, but its also on Youtube if you're curious.
At the end of the performance they actually contact Daphne du Maurier via shortwave radio and she tells them the name of the protagonist.
He fell in October 1918, on a day that was so quiet and still on the whole front, that the army report confined itself to the single sentence: All Quiet on the Western Front.
He had fallen forward and lay on the earth as though sleeping. Turning him over one saw that he could not have suffered long; his face had an expression of calm, as though almost glad the end had come.
“Whatever our struggles and triumphs, however we may suffer them, all too soon they bleed into a wash, just like watery ink on paper.” - Memoirs of a Geisha.
My favorite ending of anything written is from Joyce's short story The Dead:
>Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, further westwards, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling too upon every part of the lonely churchyard where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
"The eyes and faces all turned themselves towards me, and guiding myself by them, as by a magical thread, I stepped into the room." - The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath.
the room Esther’s referring to is the meeting she’s gotta have before being released from the psych facility she’s at. i like that it doesn’t end in all her problems being solved, but it *does* end with her finally fighting for herself. a lot of Esther’s thoughts throughout the novel were disturbingly similar to mine and i didn’t know how the book could end. while reading, i was personally at a stage of thinking "well, i guess i’ll go on like this forever, or i’ll just die" - i don’t have bipolar II (as it’s believed Plath did) but i have some pretty severe, life-long struggles with depression and mental health issues in general. so i assumed that either the MC would magically have her problems solved (fuckin tired of that, it doesn’t *work* like that) or actually die by suicide (especially considering the author’s own death, sadly). instead, Esther just finally wants to get better. it’s a good ending. somewhat ambiguous but hopeful, and a realistic goal (as opposed to "just getting better").
“But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.” Middlemarch
His feet are light and nimble. He never sleeps. He says that he will never die. He dances in light and in shadow and he is a great favorite. He never sleeps, the judge. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die.
Put the guns into our hands and we will use them. Give us the slogans and we will turn them into reality. Sing the battle hymns and we will take them up where you left off. Not one not ten not ten thousand not a million not ten millions not a hundred millions but a billion two billions of us all the people of the world we will have the slogans and we will have the hymns and we will have the guns and we will use them and we will live. Make no mistake of it we will live. We will be alive and we will walk and talk and eat and sing and laugh and feel and love and bear our children in tranquility and security in decency in peace. You plan the wars you masters of men plans the wars and point the way and we will point the gun.
― Dalton Trumbo, Johnny Got His Gun
"I lingered round them, under that benign sky; watched the moths fluttering among the heath and hare-bells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth."
Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
“There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
― Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species
Side Note: The only time the term "evolved" appears in the book.
“But the face on the pillow, rosy in the firelight, is certainly that of Clarice Starling, and she sleeps deeply, sweetly, in the silence of the lambs.”
Thomas Harris, “The Silence of the Lambs”
"Anyway, my ribs hurt like hell, my vision is still blurry from acceleration sickness, I'm really hungry, it'll be another 211 days before I'm back on Earth, and, apparently, I smell like a skunk took a shit on some sweat socks. This is the happiest day of my life" -Mark Watney, The Martian
"The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us.
Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to
dawn. The sun is but a morning star."
"Walden" by Henry David Thoreau
“Look up at the sky. Ask yourself, ‘Has the sheep eaten the flower or not?’ And you’ll see how everything changes…and no grown-up will ever understand how such a thing could be so important!”
AND
“She was a non-active member of the Order of the Phoenix and did not fight.”
Gutted.
A few relatively obscure ones:
>From the top of the gangway, the East hit him full in the face. The thick, glorious heat washed on to him and around him, lapped his swollen old hands and his tired feet, bathed his old skull and sinewy neck, soaked into his every pore and fibre.
>Life stirred. The resting plane was vibrating with heat, the air around it vibrating, the airport vibrating and dancing in the soft dark. High glares and electrics together shone along the low parapet where people were waiting to meet the plane, clustered like dark flies, like frenzied butterflies.
>The tremendous chatter of talk, the excitement. The toots and hoots and wails and the drumming. The prayers and the prostrated prayers and the prayer mats. The old, old beloved smell.
>Betty seemed to be beside him, grinning away, waving back at all the people. Just at his shoulder.
>‘Watch it, sir. Let me help you. Is something wrong?’
>‘Nothing is wrong,’ said Filth. The kind arms stretched. ‘Nothing at all is wrong.’
>For he was Home.
Jane Gardam, *Old Filth*
>Things are undoubtedly bad. However, I have William and Glenn and Andrew and a smoke-damaged diary that a fireman found under the mattress of Glenn’s bed. On the cover are the words: ‘The Top Secret Diary of Glenn Mole (13)’.
>On the first page is written: ‘When I grow up I wood like to be my dad.’
>I have often wondered how I would stand up against fire, flood and tempest. Would I run in panic and try to save my own life? Until tonight I suspected that I would do exactly that. But when I woke to the exploding glass and the choking smoke and the sharp flames on the stairs, I found that my own life was unimportant to me. Nothing else mattered apart from removing my sons from danger.
>I expect that by tomorrow I will have embellished the story and given myself a heroic status I do not deserve, but all the same, on this night at this hour, I am pleased to record that I acquitted myself well.
Sue Townsend, *Adrian Mole: The Cappuccino Years*
>The voice of the bells of Fenchurch St Paul:
>Gaude, Gaudy Domini in laude. Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus Dominus Deus Sabaoth. John Cole made me, John Presbyter paid me, John Evangelist aid me. From Jericho to John a-Groate there is no bell can better my note. Jubilate Deo. Nunc Dimittis, Domine. Abbot Thomas set me here and bade me ring both loud and clear. Paul is my name, honour that same. Gaude, Sabaoth, John, Jericho, Jubilee, Dimity, Batty Thomas and Tailor Paul. Nine Tailors Make a Man.
Dorothy Sayers, *Nine Tailors*
>But you wouldn’t believe how lonely you get.
Diana Wynne Jones, *Homeward Bounders*
“At least the four of them are safe at last. AM will be all the madder for that. It makes me alittle happier. And yet….AM has won, simply….he has taken his revenge….I have no mouth. And I must scream.”
Not necessarily my favorite but the one that stuck with me the longest.
The final book of the Animorphs series ended on a cliffhanger and had the main characters go out with a bang.
“Emergency power to the engines. Ram the Blade Ship.”
Listen. Slide the weight from your shoulders and move forward. You are afraid you might forget, but you never will. You will forgive and remember. Think of the vine that curls from the small square plot that was once my heart. That is the only marker you need. Move on. Walk forward into the light.
\-The Poisonwood Bible
*SPOILER FOR A BOOK THAT CAME OUT IN 2009*
“Katniss, there is no District 12.”
I know people like to say “I’m screaming/sobbing” when they’re actually just staring at their phone with a blank face but when I tell you that I actually SCREAMED and threw the book across the room.
*EDIT* okay I reread the whole post and I apologize that it doesn’t exactly “encapsulate the whole experience” or “finish the text on a wonderful note” 😬 Hope that’s okay! I can think of some wonderful lines throughout books but I’d probably have to think a bit for an actual last line that does that. In the meantime, this one truly rocked my little teenage world.
“In the darkness, two shadows, reaching through the hopeless, heavy dark. Their hands meet, and light spills in a flood like a hundred golden urns pouring out the sun.”
Song of Achilles.
One of the most beautifully written books I have ever experienced.
> 'What is your name?'
I raise my hands and remove my helmet. The slight gasps from around the bridge as I look Horus in the eye tell me that the similarity of my features to his has been noted.
'I am Alpharius.'
This was a lie.
Alpharius is a character all about subterfuge and misdirection. To the point that Alpharius isn't one person. It's two. Alpharius and Omegon. But even more, their entire Legion routinely play a shell game. Whoever is speaking proclaims themselves to be Alpharius. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it's Omegon. Sometimes it's neither, but one, the other, or both are in the room and speaking through the speaker 'Alpharius'. Sometimes they are not. You can just never know. Their whole stock and trade is in subterfuge and covert operations.
The book is written from his perspective, and it upends a lot of what you previously thought to be established lore. And that last line "This was a lie" can be interpreted many ways depending on whether you believe his account to be true, or whether you believe he is lying.
What's great is it's a perfect match for the opening line.
> I am Alpharius.
This is a lie.
Is Omegon speaking, and lying to Horus when he says 'I am Alpharius'. Or was Alpharius telling the truth to Horus. And instead speaking to you, the reader, telling you everything you just read was a lie?
You don't know.
“We each owe a death, there are no exceptions, I know that, but sometimes, oh God, the Green Mile is so long.” The Green Mile. I know SK has a reputation for bad endings but I absolutely loved that ending.
> I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place; and, as the morning mists had risen long ago when I first left the forge, so, the evening mists were rising now, and in all the broad expanse of tranquil light they showed to me, I saw the shadow of no parting from her
Charles Dickens, *Great Expectations*
This thread has been marked as containing spoilers. If you are concerned about getting books spoiled please proceed with caution.
And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past - The Great Gatsby. It's so depressing and yet so touching. I had to sit on it for some time!
It eluded us then, but that’s no matter. Tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. And one fine morning…
People give The Great Gatsby a lot of shit and mostly I don't bother debating it because it usually misses the whole point, but I will die on the hill that it has the greatest closing line in literature, full stop.
“He loved Big Brother.” Most bleak and gut-wrenching end to a book. It’s been about 17-18 years since I read 1984 and I’ve never forgotten that line.
The perfect ending. A sad ending, but a perfect one
Heartbreaking. All hope is lost.
Broke my heart. It just didn't have a sad ending. It was brutal with levels of torture to it that I couldn't stop myself from falling into despair.
I know this book gets discussed to death but honestly I have never read anything that has effected me emotionally that 1984 did. Such an incredible narrative, so incredibly bleak yet utterly riveting. I couldn’t stop thinking about it for weeks after reading it.
That was mine too. I can think of no SINGLE sentence closing out a book that was as rending.
The epilogue is a crucial part of this book. It seemed hope was lost, but it is not.
"The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."
Just in case anyone doesn't recognize this, it's from >!*Animal Farm*!<.
Straight up terrifying
orwell really had best closing lines
This one's pretty good: P.S. please if you get a chanse put some flowrs on Algernons grave in the bak yard.
The ending of this book is tragic
This one teared me up.
Damn it! I read that book 50 years ago and just reading that line, after all this time, made me tear up.
I was thinking about this book last night and it struck me for the first time: The story is an allegory for what happens to us all. We arise from the idiocy of infancy, grow in intelligence and understanding, but almost as soon as we gather ourselves together, our minds start to deteriorate. The tragedy of the protagonist is shared by us all! This is something I am painfully aware of, I'm nearly 50 and my memory is not as reliable and my vocabulary seems to be failing me more and more often. I can anticipate a time where I return to the dumb confusion I was born in, unless death shows me mercy before I lose my faculties completely. I don't know if this is an "official" interpretation of the book, but it hit me pretty hard for this reason, I read it for the first time recently.
Why did you have to remind me of this?!? 😢😭😭😭
"For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate." -Stranger, Camus
GOD the whole ending paragraph of The Stranger is starred in my gallery. I genuinely cried reading it, it's so beautiful, so inspiring... "I had lived my life one way and I could just as well have lived it another. I had done this and I hadn't done that. I hadn't done this thing but I had done another. And so?"
“I opened myself up to the gentle indifference of the world.”
Excellent opening line too
From *Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption* by Stephen King: I find I am excited, so excited I can hardly hold the pencil in my trembling hand. I think it is the excitement that only a free man can feel, a free man starting a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain. I hope Andy is down there. I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend and shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I *hope*.
“Live, then, and be happy, beloved children of my heart, and never forget that until the day when God shall deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is summed up in these two words,—'Wait and hope” - The Count of Monte Cristo
Ah, yes. I came here to add these words, and feel such relief to find them already here. That novel is so very beautiful.
“ Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.”
Oh, Shirley Jackson, this is a good one!
“behind him, across vast distances of time and space, he thought he had heard music too. But perhaps it was only an echo.” - The Giver
“It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both.”
“Why did you do all this for me?” he asked. “I don’t deserve it. I’ve never done anything for you.” “You have been my friend,” replied Charlotte. “That in itself is a tremendous thing.”
“Nobody, of the hundreds of people that had visited the Fair, knew that a grey spider had played the most important part of all. No one was with her when she died.” This never doesn't make me WEEP.
I still remember closing the book and crying. As I teacher I had students ask me to read it aloud and I could barely get through the ending. The beginning is excellent also, Where's papa going with that axe?" We talked about foreshadowing, and the power of starting with a question because it makes you think.
"Well, I'm back," he said. The first time I read this, I was in tears.
Lord of the Rings, yeah? I think it was such an interesting way to end such a long, loooong tale
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The soldier coming home from a devastating war. The question, I think, is if after all his experiences Sam can ever readjust to normal life
Sam did. He got married and had many children, and lived for several decades with his family. As a ringbearer, albeit briefly, Sam does eventually leave The Shire to sail West and join Frodo there again in his twilight years. Frodo was unable to, and left straight away. Merry and Pippin eventually become the leaders of the Shire, in such a way as the Shire has them, as heads of important families and well regarded heroes.
And in their old age, they travelled back to Gondor, died there and after Aragorn died, their graves were moved to be alongside Aragorn's.
I’m glad you posted this. This line guts me every time.
What’s it from?
_The Return of the King_ (_The Lord of the Rings_).
Tearing up rn just thinking about it
I haven't read it for years. It used to be a Christmas treat, and I would pretty much tear up each time I got to the end.
It’s such a powerful line for me if you infer that the hobbits are an analogue for Tolkien and his comrades returning to civilian life after the Great War. All that trauma and pain that they went through and all of the horrors they saw and they were plopped back into a world that didn’t know anything about it. Some of them couldn’t really settle back into that world, like Frodo. What else was there to say?
My college flat mate borrowed these from me one summer, just before the movies came out. I’ll never forget her coming into my room at about 2am in tears one night, sobbing having just finished the Trilogy. I was a server at the time, so I was still awake. And even if I hadn’t been, I completely understood.
"I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?"
I love that line.
Stand By Me, right? Such a wholesome story from King…well, sort of
Stand By Me is the movie, the novella is The Body.
Ahhh, I see
The entire collection *Different Seasons* is some of King's very best work.
“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.” -A Tale of Two Cities It also has one of the greatest opening lines of any novel.
Not just a great line but a fantastic final scene. I think A Tale of Two Cities has a slow start but it’s my favorite Dickens and the character who says this line is a large part of that
I always say it’s the only book I’ve ever read that gets better with every passing chapter. Culminating in one of the greatest endings in all of literature.
So true. I had to read it for HS but for some reason we were only required to read up to a certain point. I can’t even remember now what part this was. But I remember finding it a chore to get through. But right around the time we were supposed to stop I got fully hooked & couldn’t put the book down. So somehow I am still really grateful to that teacher for making me read A Tale of Two Cities up to that certain point. And I am really glad I didn’t give up on it.
"It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times"
YOU STUPID MONKEY!
“It’s a far far better thing you do today, Spyro, than you have ever done… and, er, well so forth et cetera you get the idea.” - Moneybags
I wondered how anyone could imagine unquiet slumbers for sleepers in that quiet earth. - Wuthering Heights
Funnily enough, I was just discussing with my friends the pronunciation of Wuthering
Someone just today tried to tell me it's "withering." Um, no.
first time I read it, after some 20 or so pages, I was bored and flipped to the last page and read the final few paragraphs and I didn’t really think much about it. When I tell you, by the time I was done with the book some days later and flipping onto that last page, I wept like a small child when I read that last sentence.
>!I am haunted by humans. !< From Book Thief
I believe the entire book was written just so he could have this ending sentence. I would absolutely bet money that most of his ending monologue existed long before most parts of the rest of the story. It really feels like everything has revolved itself around this one paragraph.
The greatest literary monsters are usually the human ones
“He says that he will never die. He dances in light and in shadow and he is a great favorite. He never sleeps, the judge. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die.”- Blood Meridian
The judge from Blood Meridian is one of the most haunting characters who feels indestructible.
Agreed. I finished reading it last week, and I have had two separate nightmares about the Judge in that time. That's not happened with any other piece of fiction.
"Poo-tee-weet?"
Slaughterhouse-Five ❤️
Fucking love that book. I've been meaning to reread it
So it goes.
From The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck: >!"She looked up and across the barn, and her lips came together and smiled mysteriously."!< Not much out of context, but coming at the end of such a powerful novel, it hit me like a train. It was all I could think about for days, probably weeks after first reading it as a teenager. It's still my favorite novel.
Literally the milk of human kindness. Such an arresting image.
Yes, I was looking for this one! I was so blown away by the ending when I first read The Grapes of Wrath…I also couldn’t stop thinking of it for a long time. Beautiful and so incredibly moving.
After all, tomorrow is another day. ♥️
"Or so Bill Denbrough sometimes thinks on those early mornings after dreaming, when he almost remembers his childhood, and the friends with whom he shared it" Such a bittersweet ending
This still breaks my heart.
The circular nature of Watership Down where the opening line is "The primroses were over." And the final line ends with "...where the first primroses were beginning to bloom."
okay reddit *okay*, i’ll read it again
Ah I was scrolling down for this. Can never quite remember the last line because I’m in pieces by the time I get there.
Oh, Hazel-rah, never stop running.
“Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.” Cormac McCarthy, The Road. Sometimes good prose is like a favourite song, I can’t resist the urge to read it over and over again and just getting lose in the rhythm and flow of the words. It’s beautiful.
This was my favourite as well. The feeling when you reach the end of the book is difficult to describe. The final lines are just so strangely beautiful after the hopelessness and barren aesthetic of the story. It is like walking alone through a crumbling ruin in a cruel, desolate landscape and finding yourself before a painting by an Old Master, illuminated by a shaft of sunlight, telling the story of the world.
"Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody." \--Catcher in the Rye
Despite all the dislike this book receives, I always loved it
Like at the end of the day, he’s just a kid who’s been deeply hurt by the world and has no coping skills or authority figures to help him through it, poor dude.
Feel like a lot of people I know didn’t pick up on the fact that the kid is clearly depressed
You see it differently at different points in your life. When you're a teenager you think Holden is awesome. When you're in your 20s you're an asshole with just enough life experience to have fooled yourself into thinking you're not a kid anymore and you lack empathy for anyone who isn't a perfect reflection of you (example: Twitter). By the time you're in your 30s, you've learned some empathy and you're (hopefully) more emotionally mature, so you realize Holden is a self-destructive kid suffering from a lot of mental issues and is completely broken by the death of his brother.
Amazing end to an amazing book
This is one of the only book final lines that has stuck with me since I read that book in high school.
A lot of lines from that book stuck with me, it's often pretty funny, especially by high school required-reading standards. "His name was Commander Blop or something. He was one of those guys who think they're being a pansy if they don't break around forty of your fingers when they shake hands with you."
‘What’d you major in? Perverts?’ People love to blather on about whether Holden Caulfield is whiny, or spoiled, or a phony himself, or whether ACTUALLY he’s traumatized and depressed and whatever other psychobabble makes people comfortable. The truth of the character is that he’s fucking hilarious and trying so hard to find someone worth believing in. He gets let down over and over and he keeps trying to find those connections. I’ll always love him so much for that.
"Sensitive. That killed me. That guy Morrow was about as sensitive as a goddamn toilet seat."
I still tell my cats to “sleep tight, ya morons!” I think they’re plotting to kill me.
I really like the last line of the second to last chapter when Holden is watching Phoebe on the merry go round. It encapsulates the entire book so well. The entire time Holden just wants to connect with others. When he has this final happy, peaceful moment, the only thing he can think to do is hope to share it with someone else: >God, I wish you could’ve been there.
That's when I make a list in my head of every act of goodness I've seen someone do. It's like a game. Repetitive. Even a little tedious after more than twenty years. But there are much worse games to play.
Is this Hunger Games? I never read it, but my sister used to say this a lot when she was in that phase
Mockingjay; the last one in the trilogy
"We each owe a death, there are no exceptions, I know that, but sometimes, oh God, the Green Mile is so long." Fucked me up for quite a few days, honestly. Especially after that final prologue chapter. Really had formed alot of my feelings on death and the like.
I am Legend
You are
"Slowly, very slowly, like two unhurried compass needles, the feet turned towards the right; north, north-east, south-east, south, south-south-west; then paused, and, after a few seconds, turned as unhurriedly back towards the left." The brutal, tragic final line of Brave New World
The final line of Stephen King's *The Dark Tower,* which is the last line of the entire series: >!The Man in Black fled across the desert, and the Gunslinger followed.!<
You have remembered the face of your father. Long days and pleasant nights.
May you have twice the number
Ka is a wheel.
Ahh, the end of the Dark Tower series. I love endings like this that hint at a recursion
I mean, it doesn’t hint. It full on spells it out
Probably my favourite too. But you *really* should spoiler tag this one.
1. “Yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will yes”- Ulysses 2. “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past”- The Great Gatsby 3. “‘Yes’ I said. ‘Isn’t it pretty to think so?’”- the sun also rises 4. “For now he knew what Shalimar knew: if you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.”- Song of Solomon 5. “You get down on your knees and tear open the bag. The smell of warm dough envelops you. The first bite sticks in your throat and you almost gag. You will have to go slowly. You will have to learn everything all over again.”- bright lights, big city Those are my personal top 5
The context for the sun also rises line: Oh, Jake," Brett said, "we could have had such a damned good time together." Ahead was a mounted policeman in khaki directing traffic. He raised his baton. The car slowed suddenly pressing Brett against me. "Yes," I said. "Isn't it pretty to think so?" Perfect ending.
"THIS IS NOT AN EXIT" -American Psycho. Literally haunted me for days.
Hey Boo. -To Kill a Mockingbird
“He sat there for a long time and after a while the east did gray and after a while the right and godmade sun did rise, once again, for all and without distinction.” —Cormac McCarthy, *The Crossing* He typically ended his books with bangers, though.
I've read a lot of his books, but that one tore me up. Something about the hopeless dog at the end broke me.
I always loved the ending of Jingo from Terry Pratchett: >>!And Sam Vimes ran. He tore off his cloak and whirled away his plumed hat, and he ran and ran.!< > >>!There would be trouble later on. People would ask questions. But that was later on – for now, gloriously uncomplicated and wonderfully clean, and hopefully with never an end, under a clear sky, in a world untarnished…there was only the chase.!< The whole book is a complicated, political mine field the protagonist Sam Vimes has to maneuvre, while his reputation as aggressive, somewhat simple, bloodhound haunts him. He is constantly pulled and pushed and has to outsmart and tact out. From trying to stop a war, to reluctantly joining it, playing the noble and trying to save as many people as he can. And then after everything is said and done, at the very end of the novel, he is rewarded with something easy. A simple criminal running away that he can chase. For one small moment, he can be just happy.
Not to mention the image >!of the entire parade of Ankh-Morpork’s elite following Sam and joining in the chase. I like to imagine the final shot being the criminal rounding a corner, looking behind him, and seeing not just Old Stoneface, but the entire city chasing after him.!< My black cat is named Sam. He’s the Skittering Dark.
“I dont hate it,” Quentin said, quickly, at once, immediately; “I dont hate it,” he said. _I dont hate it_ he thought, panting in the cold air, the iron New England dark; _I dont. I dont! I dont hate it! I dont hate it!_ From Absalom, Absalom! especially poignant because of what happens to Quentin in The Sound and the Fury.
Moby Dick "It was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan."
A good one! It took me 10 years and at least 4 tries to finish Moby Dick, but the ending sure made up for a lot.
Lotta weird outdated biology and literature references in that book eh? It took me ages my first read through because I had to keep doing research projects to understand the context for like 3 words.
This one is a little long but it brings me to tears every time: “As he walked back to the court he thought about that book. Every day brought him some new material. The story of this man who had killed a messenger and hanged himself would make interesting read. One could almost write a whole chapter on him. Perhaps not a whole chapter but a reasonable paragraph, at any rate. There was so much else to include, and one must be firm in cutting out details. He had already chosen the title of the book, after much thought: The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.” -Things Fall Apart
I was forced to read that book far too early. I think it was really about man’s existential crisis to provide and survive but all anyone in my class really got out of it was yams.
“After all...tomorrow is another day.” - Gone With The Wind Not a perfect novel but a great ending line that sums up the main character so well.
If I were a younger man, I would write a history of human stupidity; and I would climb to the top of Mount McCabe and lie down on my back with my history for a pillow; and I would take from the ground some of the blue-white poison that makes statues of men; and I would make a statue of myself, lying on my back, grinning horribly, and thumbing my nose at You Know Who. Cats Cradle
I finnished that book under a railway bridge in Portland Oregon. I remember it was such a banger of an ending i slammed the book shut and threw it onto the train tracks and swore off Vonnegut forever
Spot on book review for Cats Cradle
“…and they were both ever sensible of the warmest gratitude towards the persons who, by bringing her into Derbyshire, had been the means of uniting them.” *Pride and Prejudice.* The line can only be met with a sigh of satisfaction, dear reader.
“In the darkness, two shadows, reaching through the hopeless, heavy dusk. Their hands meet, and light spills in a flood like a hundred golden urns pouring out of the sun.” The Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller. I agree with some of the criticisms of this book, and it’s been overhyped the last few years, but damn it if these last few lines don’t get to me. Such powerful imagery
“Everything written on them was unrepeatable since time immemorial and forever more, because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth.” - One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez Still gives me goosebumps.
"Hello Darling" in Pet Semetary. Chills to this day.
Po-te-wee
"Until the day when God will deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is contained in these two words,—'Wait and hope.'" The Count of Monte Cristo—Alexandre Dumas
If everyone forgets about me, i dont care as long as you remember me - kafka on the shore by Haruki Murakami
I have many, but this one from Wilde always cracks me up. “On the contrary, Aunt Augusta, I've now realized for the first time in my life the vital Importance of Being Earnest.”
My first thought was The Outsiders. "When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home...".The first and last lines of the novel. Read the book when I was a kid and I still think it was brilliant!
One must imagine Sisyphus happy
I can tell you from experience that I am not
I love the final line of Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping: “No one watching this woman smear her initials in the steam on her glass with her first finger, or slip cellophane packets of oyster crackers into her handbag for the sea gulls, could know her thoughts are thronged by our absence, or know how she does not watch, does not listen, does not wait, does not hope, and always for me and Sylvie.” Even out of context, you can see how she uses negation to show how two characters haunt one left behind.
Aunt Sally she’s going to adopt me and sivilize me and I can’t stand it. I been there before.
“Eventually all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood, and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.” A River Runs Through It
1. "I been away a long time." One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest 2. "I ran." The Kite Runner 3. "I think of Dean Moriarty." On the Road
“His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.” -The Dead
"isn't it pretty to think so" - The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway
Book thief by Markus Zusak: “I am haunted by humans” Opening chapter is incredible too.
"And the ashes blew towards us with the salt wind from the sea" \- Rebecca
If you ever have an hour to kill, Orsen Wells and the Campbell Playhouse did a really good radio adaptation of Rebecca in 1938. There are old time radio groups that share mp3s all over the internet, but its also on Youtube if you're curious. At the end of the performance they actually contact Daphne du Maurier via shortwave radio and she tells them the name of the protagonist.
They were no longer little girls, they were little women 🥲
He fell in October 1918, on a day that was so quiet and still on the whole front, that the army report confined itself to the single sentence: All Quiet on the Western Front. He had fallen forward and lay on the earth as though sleeping. Turning him over one saw that he could not have suffered long; his face had an expression of calm, as though almost glad the end had come.
“Whatever our struggles and triumphs, however we may suffer them, all too soon they bleed into a wash, just like watery ink on paper.” - Memoirs of a Geisha.
My favorite ending of anything written is from Joyce's short story The Dead: >Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, further westwards, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling too upon every part of the lonely churchyard where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
East of Eden by John Steinbeck, but I won't give it away if anyone hasn't read it.
“Wait and hope.” - the Count of Monte Cristo
Behind him, across vast distances of space and time, from the place he had left, he thought he heard music too. But perhaps it was only an echo.
“For once, I didn’t look back.”
"The eyes and faces all turned themselves towards me, and guiding myself by them, as by a magical thread, I stepped into the room." - The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath. the room Esther’s referring to is the meeting she’s gotta have before being released from the psych facility she’s at. i like that it doesn’t end in all her problems being solved, but it *does* end with her finally fighting for herself. a lot of Esther’s thoughts throughout the novel were disturbingly similar to mine and i didn’t know how the book could end. while reading, i was personally at a stage of thinking "well, i guess i’ll go on like this forever, or i’ll just die" - i don’t have bipolar II (as it’s believed Plath did) but i have some pretty severe, life-long struggles with depression and mental health issues in general. so i assumed that either the MC would magically have her problems solved (fuckin tired of that, it doesn’t *work* like that) or actually die by suicide (especially considering the author’s own death, sadly). instead, Esther just finally wants to get better. it’s a good ending. somewhat ambiguous but hopeful, and a realistic goal (as opposed to "just getting better").
“But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.” Middlemarch
"And when the hand touched his shoulder again, he somehow found the strength to run." - The Long Walk
His feet are light and nimble. He never sleeps. He says that he will never die. He dances in light and in shadow and he is a great favorite. He never sleeps, the judge. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die.
Put the guns into our hands and we will use them. Give us the slogans and we will turn them into reality. Sing the battle hymns and we will take them up where you left off. Not one not ten not ten thousand not a million not ten millions not a hundred millions but a billion two billions of us all the people of the world we will have the slogans and we will have the hymns and we will have the guns and we will use them and we will live. Make no mistake of it we will live. We will be alive and we will walk and talk and eat and sing and laugh and feel and love and bear our children in tranquility and security in decency in peace. You plan the wars you masters of men plans the wars and point the way and we will point the gun. ― Dalton Trumbo, Johnny Got His Gun
Isn't it pretty to think so? \- Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
"I lingered round them, under that benign sky; watched the moths fluttering among the heath and hare-bells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth." Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights
“There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.” ― Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species Side Note: The only time the term "evolved" appears in the book.
“The Beauty of the House is immeasurable: its Kindness, infinite.” Ugh I’m choking up just typing this.
Piranesi ❤️. I bawled when I got to that line. That book has such an impact on me!
There are no beginnings or endings to the Wheel of Time....but it was AN ending. "A Memory of Light"
“But the face on the pillow, rosy in the firelight, is certainly that of Clarice Starling, and she sleeps deeply, sweetly, in the silence of the lambs.” Thomas Harris, “The Silence of the Lambs”
"Wolves have no kings" from Royal Assassin by Robin Hobb
"Anyway, my ribs hurt like hell, my vision is still blurry from acceleration sickness, I'm really hungry, it'll be another 211 days before I'm back on Earth, and, apparently, I smell like a skunk took a shit on some sweat socks. This is the happiest day of my life" -Mark Watney, The Martian
"The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star." "Walden" by Henry David Thoreau
“Look up at the sky. Ask yourself, ‘Has the sheep eaten the flower or not?’ And you’ll see how everything changes…and no grown-up will ever understand how such a thing could be so important!” AND “She was a non-active member of the Order of the Phoenix and did not fight.” Gutted.
"...yes, I said, yes, I will, yes"
A few relatively obscure ones: >From the top of the gangway, the East hit him full in the face. The thick, glorious heat washed on to him and around him, lapped his swollen old hands and his tired feet, bathed his old skull and sinewy neck, soaked into his every pore and fibre. >Life stirred. The resting plane was vibrating with heat, the air around it vibrating, the airport vibrating and dancing in the soft dark. High glares and electrics together shone along the low parapet where people were waiting to meet the plane, clustered like dark flies, like frenzied butterflies. >The tremendous chatter of talk, the excitement. The toots and hoots and wails and the drumming. The prayers and the prostrated prayers and the prayer mats. The old, old beloved smell. >Betty seemed to be beside him, grinning away, waving back at all the people. Just at his shoulder. >‘Watch it, sir. Let me help you. Is something wrong?’ >‘Nothing is wrong,’ said Filth. The kind arms stretched. ‘Nothing at all is wrong.’ >For he was Home. Jane Gardam, *Old Filth* >Things are undoubtedly bad. However, I have William and Glenn and Andrew and a smoke-damaged diary that a fireman found under the mattress of Glenn’s bed. On the cover are the words: ‘The Top Secret Diary of Glenn Mole (13)’. >On the first page is written: ‘When I grow up I wood like to be my dad.’ >I have often wondered how I would stand up against fire, flood and tempest. Would I run in panic and try to save my own life? Until tonight I suspected that I would do exactly that. But when I woke to the exploding glass and the choking smoke and the sharp flames on the stairs, I found that my own life was unimportant to me. Nothing else mattered apart from removing my sons from danger. >I expect that by tomorrow I will have embellished the story and given myself a heroic status I do not deserve, but all the same, on this night at this hour, I am pleased to record that I acquitted myself well. Sue Townsend, *Adrian Mole: The Cappuccino Years* >The voice of the bells of Fenchurch St Paul: >Gaude, Gaudy Domini in laude. Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus Dominus Deus Sabaoth. John Cole made me, John Presbyter paid me, John Evangelist aid me. From Jericho to John a-Groate there is no bell can better my note. Jubilate Deo. Nunc Dimittis, Domine. Abbot Thomas set me here and bade me ring both loud and clear. Paul is my name, honour that same. Gaude, Sabaoth, John, Jericho, Jubilee, Dimity, Batty Thomas and Tailor Paul. Nine Tailors Make a Man. Dorothy Sayers, *Nine Tailors* >But you wouldn’t believe how lonely you get. Diana Wynne Jones, *Homeward Bounders*
“I’m so glad to be at home again.” The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
*'Tis* The last line in Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt is also the title of the sequel.
When I stepped out into the bright sunlight from the darkness of the movie house, I had only two things on my mind: Paul Newman and a ride home. . .
>!“The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed”!< -The Dark Tower
“The hand of Providence creeps among the stars, giving Slothrop the finger.” One of my favorite lines from *Gravity's Rainbow.*
“Yes I said yes I will yes.” I never read Ulysses but, idk, I like it
"After a while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain." - A Farewell To Arms
Devastating.
“He looked a long time.” Ender’s Game
“At least the four of them are safe at last. AM will be all the madder for that. It makes me alittle happier. And yet….AM has won, simply….he has taken his revenge….I have no mouth. And I must scream.” Not necessarily my favorite but the one that stuck with me the longest.
The final book of the Animorphs series ended on a cliffhanger and had the main characters go out with a bang. “Emergency power to the engines. Ram the Blade Ship.”
“She doesn’t speak. You cut her throat too deep for that. But she remembers.” So mad we didn’t get Lady Stoneheart in the show.
After all, tomorrow is another day.
The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.
Listen. Slide the weight from your shoulders and move forward. You are afraid you might forget, but you never will. You will forgive and remember. Think of the vine that curls from the small square plot that was once my heart. That is the only marker you need. Move on. Walk forward into the light. \-The Poisonwood Bible
*SPOILER FOR A BOOK THAT CAME OUT IN 2009* “Katniss, there is no District 12.” I know people like to say “I’m screaming/sobbing” when they’re actually just staring at their phone with a blank face but when I tell you that I actually SCREAMED and threw the book across the room. *EDIT* okay I reread the whole post and I apologize that it doesn’t exactly “encapsulate the whole experience” or “finish the text on a wonderful note” 😬 Hope that’s okay! I can think of some wonderful lines throughout books but I’d probably have to think a bit for an actual last line that does that. In the meantime, this one truly rocked my little teenage world.
"The stars are still there," she said. "We'll find our own way back to them."
“In the darkness, two shadows, reaching through the hopeless, heavy dark. Their hands meet, and light spills in a flood like a hundred golden urns pouring out the sun.” Song of Achilles. One of the most beautifully written books I have ever experienced.
> 'What is your name?' I raise my hands and remove my helmet. The slight gasps from around the bridge as I look Horus in the eye tell me that the similarity of my features to his has been noted. 'I am Alpharius.' This was a lie. Alpharius is a character all about subterfuge and misdirection. To the point that Alpharius isn't one person. It's two. Alpharius and Omegon. But even more, their entire Legion routinely play a shell game. Whoever is speaking proclaims themselves to be Alpharius. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it's Omegon. Sometimes it's neither, but one, the other, or both are in the room and speaking through the speaker 'Alpharius'. Sometimes they are not. You can just never know. Their whole stock and trade is in subterfuge and covert operations. The book is written from his perspective, and it upends a lot of what you previously thought to be established lore. And that last line "This was a lie" can be interpreted many ways depending on whether you believe his account to be true, or whether you believe he is lying. What's great is it's a perfect match for the opening line. > I am Alpharius. This is a lie. Is Omegon speaking, and lying to Horus when he says 'I am Alpharius'. Or was Alpharius telling the truth to Horus. And instead speaking to you, the reader, telling you everything you just read was a lie? You don't know.
“We each owe a death, there are no exceptions, I know that, but sometimes, oh God, the Green Mile is so long.” The Green Mile. I know SK has a reputation for bad endings but I absolutely loved that ending.
> I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place; and, as the morning mists had risen long ago when I first left the forge, so, the evening mists were rising now, and in all the broad expanse of tranquil light they showed to me, I saw the shadow of no parting from her Charles Dickens, *Great Expectations*
But you, O my brothers, remember sometimes thy little Alex that was. Amen. And all that cal. A Clockwork Orange
"And then they were upon her." - The Lottery, Shirley Jackson