Literature's best closing lines

[JerryGarcia]

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.

James Joyce "The Dead"

 

[Mark6]

Really? No one's said it yet? "He loved Big Brother."

For a depressing ending, yes, this one is hard to beat.

For a happy ending, nothing in my experience beats the closing line of "The Prefect" by Alastair Reynolds. It is so moving, it actally made me cry -- and had the same effect on my daughter. Unfortunately, that line makes no sense if you had not read the book.

 

[badnewsBH]

One that sticks in my mind is from "The High King" by Lloyd Alexander.

"And in time, only the bards knew the truth of it."

 

[Denver]

I'm sure to be hated for this:
"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed."

Yes. Yes you are.

There are of course many famous Dicken's endings, such as:

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.

And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God Bless Us, Every One!

I suppose I like those, not so much because of their content, but the way they punctuate the story.

BTW, are poems included in the thread?

 

[LibraryLady]

"The wild things roared their terrible roars and gnashed their terrible teeth and rolled their terrible eyes and showed their terrible claws but Max stepped into his private boat and waved good-bye and sailed back over a year and in and out of weeks and through a day and into the night of his very own room where he found his supper waiting for him- and it was still hot."

- Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak​

In return - an Australian twist to an older ending:

"Such is life, my fellow-mummers - just like a poor player, that bluffs and feints his hour upon the stage, and then cheapens down to mere nonentity. But let me not hear any small witticism to the further effect that its story is a tale told by a vulgarian, full of slang and blanky - signifying nothing."​

Good job!

 

[Akhenaten]

Thank you Ma'am. Is it OK to admit that the pictures were my favourite part of the book?

 

[Lothian]

22:21 The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen

always cracks me up given the story before.

 

[Akhenaten]

I've heard there's evidence that it's a true story.

 

[brodski]

"Like a dog!" he said, it was as if the shame of it should outlive him.

...

 

[TraneWreck]

cras amet qui nunquam amavit

quique amavit cras amet

"Let him love tomorrow who has never loved, and let him who has loved love tomorrow"

The Magus

I submit that ending as one of the better unresolved conclusions.

 

[Myshkin]

...

Like a Dog?

Kafka?

 

[Lucian]

For sone þu bist ladlic & lad to iseonne.
(For soon you will be loathsome and hateful to see.)

"The Grave," late 12th century.

 

[brodski]

Like a Dog?

Kafka?

yes.

 

[Alferd_Packer]

I was going to suggest:

"So it goes."

But I don't think that that is the last line in the book.

 

[TraneWreck]

I was going to suggest:

"So it goes."

But I don't think that that is the last line in the book.

Great call, that book had an awesome ending:

"One bird said to Billy Pilgrim, "Poo-tee-weet?"

Of course he tells you how the book ends in the introduction, so it might be the best line that opened and closed a novel at the same time.

 

[TraneWreck]

I thought the ending to Moby Dick was powerful. I googled it, but all I could get was the last line. I'll have to look at the book when I get home.

From memory, after the final chaotic moments of The Pequod, the closing describes the uncaring ocean calming, and hiding away any indication of human drama. It was one of the more elegant descriptions of nature's indifference.

 

[Mel Odious]

Now my charms are all overthrown,
And what strength I have's mine own.
Which is most faint. Now 'tis true
I must be here confined by you,
Or sent to Naples. Let me not,
Since I have my dukedom got
And pardoned the deceiver, dwell
In this bare island by your spell;
But release me from my bands
With the help of your good hands.
Gentle breath of yours my sails
Must fill, or else my project fails,
Which was to please. Now I want
Spirits to enforce, art to enchant;
And my ending is despair
Unless I be relieved by prayer,
Which pierces so that it assaults
Mercy itself and frees all faults.
As you from crimes would pardoned be,
Let your indulgence set me free.


Whenever I read The Tempest, I always imagine these words of Prospero spoken not to the audience as an epilogue, as I've seen it presented, but rather directly to Ariel. Throughout the play, Prospero is a miracle worker with prodigious powers. To see him in the final scene as a humble supplient, kneeling at the feet of his former servant, gives certain lines of the speech a far greater poignancy than they might otherwise have, at least to me.

Frankly, I don't know if these qualify as among the great closing lines in literature or not. I've been a recluse for almost all of my adult life, so perhaps the speech resonates with me in a way that it may not for others.

 

[wetspot]

There are of course many famous Dicken's endings...

I particularly like this one:

"They went quietly down into the roaring streets, inseparable and blessed; and as they passed along in sunshine and shade, the noisy and the eager, and the arrogant and the froward and the vain, fretted, and chafed, and made their usual uproar."

Apart from the Dickensian poetry of it, I appreciate the existentialist observation that the world doesn't care about your happiness or lack thereof.

Also, "froward" is a word that deserves more use.

 

[Mashuna]

th-th-th-that's all folks!

 

[angrysoba]

Really? No one's said it yet? "He loved Big Brother."

That would have been mine, so I'll just have to make do with...

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.