Favorite last line of a novel?

[Salviati]

Thought that this would be an interesting twist on the first line thread.


He loved Big Brother.
George Orwell, 1984

Gives me the willies every time I read it...

[scarlett1]

1. "I'll think about that tomorrow after all, tomorrow is another day" GWTW

Gone With The Wind

Check out my name and you'll understand

[Danmel]

31. Charlotte's Web

"It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both" E.B.White

[MissBrooks]

36. My fave too

[onecitizen]

46. I kept thinking:

"frankly my dear, I don't give a damn". And wondered why no one mentioned that since I thought it was the most famous of all last lines. Then I read your reply and remembered that wasn't the last line, YOUR line was the last line. In my mind though, it will always be Clark Gable saying, "frankly my dear.......:-)

[StellaBlue]

91. Love it, love it, love it

In fact, it's about time I read the book again. Saw the movie for the 50somethingth time in July.

Love it! LOVE IT!

[benburch]

2. "Marching Morons" by C.M. Kornbluth

"And the last thing he learned was that death is the end of pain."

[rockymountaindem]

3. More from Orwell

Although I don't know if "Homage to Catalonia" counts as a novel:

"I fear we have fallen into that deep British sleep from which we will not be awakened except by the scream of bombs."

[Ready4Change]

4. "WIpeout"

Last line of "Dark Star", I think.

[NationalEnquirer]

44. DarkStar.

Darkstar, one of the few books that was better than the movie. I mean, I know the movie was sort of tongue-in-cheek, but boy was it cheesy...

[Jim Sagle]

5. "The doorknob opened a blue eye and looked at him."

from The Fairy Chessmen by Henry Kuttner (writing as Lewis Padgett). Strangely enough, that's also the first line of the same novel.

[USA_1]

6. from "El Coronel No Tiene Que Le Escriba"

I read the novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez in Spanish and it's translated title is No One Writes to the Colonel. It's famous last line = ¡Mierda!

Classic!

[gottaB]

7. Often confuse it with the beginning, but I think it goes...

He could feel his heart beating against the pine needle floor of the forest.

[terrya]

8. Let's see if I remember them from "A Tale of Two Cities"

I haven't re-read it in a while, but...

"It's a far, far better thing I do than I have done. It's a far better resting place I go to, than I have been"

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe those were the words Dickens wrote.

[RevolutionaryActs]

22. *flips open book*

"It is a far, far better thing that I do, then I have ever done; it is far, far better rest that I go to then I have ever known."


:)

[terrya]

24. Well, I was so close. :-)

But it is a very well written last line.

[RevolutionaryActs]

25. It is a very well written last line, the whole last paragraph is lovely :D

[JI7]

37. the first and last lines of that book could be the best

certainly they are somewhere at the top of the list of best first and last lines.

[Rowdyboy]

9. Edgar Allen Poe

"While I gazed, this fissure rapidly widened-there came a fierce breath of the whirlwind-the entire orb of the satellite burst at once upon my sight-my brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing asunder-there was a long tumultuous shouting sound like the voice of a thousand waters-and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of "The House of Usher".

Okay, maybe its just a short story, but it has the impact of a novel.

[charlyvi]

10. They endured.

The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner.

[hickman1937]

11. I can't quote it

but the last line in Sue Grafton's C is for Corpse. When Kinsey writes her last summation to Bobby Callahan.

[Rob H.]

12. It's a short story, but...

...the last line from William Gibson's Burning Chrome.

And sometimes late at night I'll pass a window with posters of simstim stars, all those beautiful, identical eyes staring back at me out of faces that are nearly as identical, and sometimes the eyes are hers, but none of the faces are, none of them ever are, and I see her far out on the edge of all this sprawl of night and cities, and then she waves goodbye.

[indigobusiness]

13. 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.

[ok_cpu]

14. "So we beat on,"

"boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

[Phentex]

15. Ya just gotta love that!

:)

[indigobusiness]

18. No kidding! What's that from?

I'm functionally illiterate.

[jobycom]

20. That's not fair, you know

The Great Gatsby wins for every other line in the book, too.

[leyton]

53. That is a lovely last section.

"He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night."

I love that image.

[gauguin57]

61. Yep, the best. Great Gatsby IS the great American novel.

Love that last line. And they didn't even use it in the damned movie. They made up some other crap for Sam Waterston (Nick) to say.

[kranich]

16. A perfect ending to a perfect story

Oxen and wain-ropes would not bring me back again to that accursed island; and the worst dreams that ever I have are when I hear the surf booming about its coasts, or start upright in bed, with the sharp voice of Captain Flint still ringing in my ears: 'Pieces of eight! pieces of eight!'

[DrZeeLit]

17. "Lowenstein. Lowenstein."

But the line that leads to it is great, and I don't have a copy of the book.

Prince of Tides
Conroy

[northzax]

85. like this?

I can't tell you why I do it or what it means, but each night when I drive toward my southern home and my southern life, I whisper these words: "Lowenstein, Lowenstein."

[jobycom]

19. It sure is pretty to think so.

The Sun Also Rises-- Hemingway.

[ok_cpu]

21. Thank you

I almost chose this rather than "Gatsby". Beautiful.

[ruthg]

40. Ah.. That is another very useful line..

I can't believe how many times I have found myself using it over the years..

[TyeDye75]

23. "Now what the hell ya suppose is eatin them two guys?"

Of Mice and Men.... not a dry eye in the house

[ExclamationPoint]

26. "...after all, tommorow is, another day!"-Gone With the Wind

Im a sucker for classics. It's just got so much power and hope in it that it makes me cry.

[robbedvoter]

27. "And when he knew it, he stopped knowing" - Jack London - Martin Eden

[Parrcrow]

28. "Somebody up there likes you" --Sirens of Titan

Kurt Vonnegut.

[LiviaOlivia]

29. George Eliot-"Middlemarch"

"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."

[iamjoy]

30. The Handmaid's Tale

And so I step up, into the darkness within; or else the light.

(unless of course you count the "Historical Notes" after the last chapter)

[Danmel]

32. Charlotte's Web & To Kill A Mockingbird

"It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both." E.B. White



"He turned out the light and went into Jem's room. He would be there all night, and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning." Harper Lee


Two of the best last lines ever.

[ruthg]

41. More goosebumps...NT

[Uncle Roy]

33. "Yossarian jumped."

From Heller's Catch-22.

The ending goes:

-------------------

"I mean it, Yossarian. You'll have to keep on your toes very minute of
every day. They'll bend heaven and earth to catch you."

"I'll keep on my toes every minute."

"You'll have to jump."

"I'll jump."

"Jump!" Major Danby cried.

Yossarian jumped. Nately's whore was hiding just outside the door. The
knife came down, missing him by inches, and he took off."

-------------------

Still makes me smile, still gives me hope.

Catch-22 was the original "stop-loss" order. It stated that the only way you could get out of flying more missions was if you were crazy, but anyone who said he was crazy so he wouldn't have to fly any more missions was obviously sane, so he had to fly more missions.

The book has as much to tell us today as it did 40 years ago when I first read it

At the close of the war Milo Minderbinder founded Haliburton...

[ruthg]

39. You just gave me goosebumps...and that is the one I would pick

There have been times in my life when I have found myself mumbling..." the knife came down missing him by inches, and Yossarian jumped". I read that book once a year and have since I first read it in 1968 or so. It has a great first couple of lines as well...but I guess that would be another thread, eh?

[Uncle Roy]

43. Funny how a book can have that power...

Like you, I read it several times back in the sixties, but I haven't read it since. I think it might be time to dig it out again though; it feels like those days are back again. There's no draft, but much else feels the same. "We're up to our necks in the Big Muddy and the dammned fool says 'Move on'" (Fugs?)

One year, while still in high school (66? 67?) I gave my father a copy of Catch-22 for his birthday. A few weeks later, I asked him how he had liked it. He sneered "It's about two queers!" Sigh... I guess he was struck by the opening sentence too, which went (if memory serves) "When Yossarian met the chaplain it was love at first sight". I think Dad had "issues..."

[ruthg]

45. Waist Deep In The Big Muddy was...

Pete Seeger...who got the Smothers Brothers show cancelled by playing it ...

The Fugs were great too and performed rather recently ( even though Tuli Kufperberg ( sp?) is aroung 80 years old...

And yes, re-read Catch 22. Always a good idea.

[RevolutionaryActs]

54. That's what I wanted to post!

:D

I don't own the book(d'oh) and I couldn't remember the exact wording, glad someone else posted it. :7

[NNadir]

34. Poot-tee-tweet.

Vonnegut.

"Slaughterhouse Five."

In my view one of the most important novels ever written.

[Uncle Roy]

35. "I am haunted by waters."

Norman Maclean again, in A River Runs Through It

The last part of the book, an extended description of a fishing trip on the Big Blackfoot River, is the most gorgeous and moving piece of writing I've ever read.

[YankeyMCC]

38. "Well...I'm back."

Sam from "Return of the King"

A line that ends not just a novel but an epic. And not just marking an ending but a continuing of life that will go one for the remaining characters and the world the stories created.

[matt bors]

42. Joseph Conrad:

"The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed somber under an overcast sky-seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness."

[jobycom]

47. Great choice.

One of my favorite stories, but I never think of it as a novel, so I never bring it up in these discussions. There are a few books that are so vivid and relevant to the world that they pop into my mind at odd times, almost as guidance on complex issues. "Heart of Darkness" is one of those. I thought of that last line endless times in the leadup to the Iraqi invasion, as the direction we seemed (and still seem) to be heading.

[Lisa]

58. most of my (mainly social science) students hadn't heard of it

Kind of a setback, because I'd been hoping to get them to discuss a quote from an early 20th century textbook which had argued that the reason ordinary-seeming Belgians had carried out atrocities in the Congo was because the African climate had driven them mad. (Rampant environmental determinism -- many intellectuals agreed with that viewpoint, which made Conrad's story that much more subversive and shocking!)

Luckily a fair number of them had seen "Apocalypse Now".

[Matilda]

48. And for something a little bit different .....

Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say
that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.

The opening line of Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone, which
ends:

They don't know we're not allowed to use magic at home. I'm going to
have a lot of fun with Dudley this summer ....


Edit: typo

[kikiek]

49. The last line from "For Whom The Bell Tolls" always comes to my mind.

I consider it to be written by John Donne not Hemingway "And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee." Never forgot that even though it has been years since I read it.

[Democrats_win]

50. "...yes I said yes I will Yes."

From James Joyce's Ulysses.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molly_Bloom%27s_Soliloquy

[insanity]

51. John Steibeck's last few lines from East of Eden

Adam looked up with sick weariness. His lips parted and failed and tried again. Then his lungs filled. He expelled the air and his lips combed the rushing sigh. His whispered word seemed to hang in the air:
"Timshel!"
His eyes closed and he slept.

[Goblinmonger]

52. Not sure if this is my all-time favorite but

it certainly ranks up there and I haven't seen it yet:

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." F.S. Fitzgerald _The Great Gatsby_

Every time I read this book, I like it more (and I teach it to 11th graders so I get to read it every year!).

[mark414]

55. On The Road

"So in American when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars'll be out, and don't you know that God is Pooh Bear? the evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what's going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty."

[raccoon]

56. “And I have by me, for my comfort,

two strange white flowers - shriveled now, and brown and flat and brittle – to witness that even when mind and strength had gone, gratitude and mutual tenderness still lived on in the heart of man.” (Narrator – Epilogue, Pg. 147)

From THE TIME MACHINE. It was my favorite book for many years.

[kcr]

57. She looked up and across the barn, ...

..and her lips came together and smiled mysteriously

[Salviati]

59. Wow, this thread is still going!

I think that this is my longest lived thread ever.

[gauguin57]

60. Not the VERY last line, but just before the last line: Lord of the Flies

"...Ralph wept for the death of innocence, the hardness of man's heart, and the fly through the air of a true, wise friend called Piggy."

[Uncle Roy]

62. kick... (nfm)

.

[catbert836]

63. Favorite last line of a novel?

I think with the thread with favorite first lines that keeps getting kicked, we could really use one abot last lines too. Here's mine:
"Before reaching the final line, however he had already understood that he would never leave that room, for it was forseen that the city of mirrors (or mirages) would be wiped out by the wind and exiled from the memory of men at the precise moment when Aureliano Babilionia would finish deciphering the parchments and that 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."

[pitohui]

64. i'd rather not do this

it's like publishing the punch lines to jokes

you get a double knock because it's clear in context what novel you're referring to, guess i won't bother to read that one now!

[Goblinmonger]

65. Oh, come one.

I am reading that novel right now and I still have no idea how it really ends. I haven't thrown it down in disgust at having read the last line. I think this is a legitimate thread.

[pitohui]

76. hokay in the interest of non-spoilers tho i won't tell you the book

"And when he came back to, he was flat on his back on the beach in the freezing sand, and it was raining out of a low sky, and the tide was way out."

[Democrats_win]

70. LOL! Still, I had to search to figure out which novel it is.

I think that the name in the quote above is misspelled.

"i won't bother to read that one now!"

--LOL!

[northzax]

86. well, I guess you have two options

either don't read a thread about famous last lines of novels, or, of course realize that in a mystical, magical book like Garcia Marquez's, the PLOT ISN'T THE POINT. the story isn't important, the brilliance is in how he tells it.

sheesh.

[Goblinmonger]

66. "He loved big brother."

Sorry if I ruined anything for those of you that haven't read 1984. :sarcasm: This last line gives me the chills everytime I think about it. We need the satirical power of Orwell again. I hope somebody can rise to the call.

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

67. Well,

"This is not an exit." -- American Psycho

(but aside from that & 1984, I can't remember any other last lines!)

[MaineDem]

68. "Tomorrow is another day"

It's the only last line I can think of.

[LWolf]

69. "Yossarian jumped.

Nately's whore was hiding just outside the door. The knife came down, missing him by inches, and he took off."

And:

"You plan the wars you masters of men plan the wars and point the way and we will point the gun."

[Democrats_win]

71. “As I look down at him, I think that he already knows what kind of race

he’s in. He knows that it is going to take everything he has to stay in front to run free.”

[Democrats_win]

72. The dark is generous and patient and always wins--but at the heart of its

strength is its greatest weakness, a candle can hold it back.

Love is greater than a candle.

Love can ignite stars.

[catbert836]

73. Oops- duplicate

Mods, you can go ahead and lock this one.

[Uncle Roy]

74. Maybe they can combine them? I'll ask. (nfm)

.

[catbert836]

75. Okay, thanks

n/t

[intheflow]

77. This seems like a reasonable request.

Will do! :hi:

[Uncle Roy]

78. You are the soul of moderation. Thanks! (nfm)

.

[SteppingRazor]

80. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas...

Gotta quote my avatar, of course. This is from memory, but:

"I felt like a monster reincarnation of Horatio Alger. A man on the move. And just sick enough to be totally confident."

[SteppingRazor]

81. Also gotta give it up for Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby:

"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter - tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms further... And one fine morning --

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. "

[SteppingRazor]

82. Also, far better than GWTW's kiss-off ending is Hemingway's

The Sun Also Rises:

"Oh Jake, we could have had such a damned good time together."

"Yes. Isn't it pretty to think so?"



And while we're on the Hemingway subject, how bout A Farewell to Arms, when Henry tries to say goodbye to the corpse of his one true love:
"But after I had got them out and shut the door and turned off the light it wasn’t any good. It was like saying good-by to a statue. After awhile I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain.”

If there's a more depressing ending out there, I can't think of it.

[Uncle Roy]

79. From "At Swim, Two Boys" by Jamie O'Neill:

He never looked again for his friend, until one time, though it was years to come, years that spilt with hurt and death and closed in bitter most bitter defeat, one time when he lay broken and fevered and the Free State troopers were hounding the fields, when he lay the last time in MacMurrough's arms, and MacEmm so tightly held him close: his eyes closed as he drifted away, and that last time he did look for his friend. Doyler was far far away on his slope, and his cap waving in the air. "What cheer, eh?" he called.

I cried for hours at the ending of this book. Now it's got me going again...

[Democrats_win]

83. Wonderful quote, thanks for posting.

[Paladin]

84. John Irving's "A Widow for One Year"

Something like: "Don't cry, honey, it's just me and Eddie."

The same phrase is initially stated in the first part of the book, decades earler and under radically different circumstances. Goosebump material....

[TheWraith]

87. The last line from Arthur C. Clarke's story "The Star"

I won't quote it here, because you really have to read it in context, and I don't want to ruin the story. But it gives me a shiver every time I read it.

[SCDem]

88. "You are B." - The Story of B by Daniel Quinn

Which doesn't mean anything to you unless you read the book. What a powerful last line.

[Marie26]

89. O'Henry's last lines (spoiler?)

Though he mostly wrote short stories - they always had the perfect ironic twist.

"And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful
chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely
sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house.
But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of
all who give gifts these two were the wisest. Of all who give and
receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest.
They are the magi."

[Czolgosz]

90. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly . . .

A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill 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.

[petgoat]

92. (Relying on memory) "I been away a long time."

from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

[bikebloke]

93. How late It Was, How Late by James Kelman

(paraphrased)
...then he climbed into the taxi, and was out of sight.

***It's about a Scottish crook who gets into a brawl with the police and goes blind.

[StellaBlue]

94. That's pretty damn good, but I go for GWTW, too.

After all, tomorrow is another day.

[insanity]

95. timshel

From Steibeck's East of Eden