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Literature's best closing lines

Gilmar said:
Two from Arthur C. Clarke (spoilerized because they are kinda twist endings), a novel and a short story.

Rendezvous With Rama:
When Norton had glimpsed Rama for the last time, a tiny star hurtling outward beyond Venus, he knew that part of his life was over. He was just fifty-five, but he felt he had left his youth down there on the curving Central Plain, among mysteries and wonders now receding inexorably beyond the reach of man. Whatever honors and achievements the future brought him, for the rest of his life he would be haunted by a sense of anticlimax and the knowledge of opportunities missed.

So he told himself; but even then, he should have known better.

And on far-off Earth, Dr. Carlisle Perera had as yet told no one of how he had wakened from a restless sleep with the message from his subconscious echoing in his brain:

The Ramans do everything in threes.


The Nine Billion Names of God:
"Look," whispered Chuck, and George lifted his eyes to heaven. (There is always a last time for everything.)

Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.
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Dammit you beat me to it. ;) I would have mentioned Rama too.


Here's another favourite from Kipling



`I say,' said M`Turk, casting back through the years. `Did Stalky ever tell you how Rabbits-Eggs came to rock King that night?'

`No,' said Dick Four.

Then M`Turk told.

`I see,' said Dick Four, nodding. `Practically he duplicated that trick over again. There's nobody like Stalky.'

`That's just where you make the mistake,' I said. `India's full of Stalkies--Cheltenham and Haileybury and Marlborough chaps--that we don't know anything about, and the surprises will begin when there is really a big row on.'

`Who will be surprised?' said Dick Four.

`The other side. The gentlemen who go to the front in first-class carriages. Just imagine Stalky let loose on the south side of Europe with a sufficiency of Sikhs and a reasonable prospect of loot. Consider it quietly.'

`There's something in that, but you're too much of an optimist, Beetle,' said the Infant.

`Well, I've a right to be. Ain't I responsible for the whole thing? You needn't laugh. Who wrote "Aladdin now has got his wife"--eh?'

`What's that got to do with it?' said Tertius.

`Everything,' said I.

`Prove it,' said the Infant.

And I have.

 
Gilmar said:
Rendezvous With Rama:
When Norton had glimpsed Rama for the last time, a tiny star hurtling outward beyond Venus, he knew that part of his life was over. He was just fifty-five, but he felt he had left his youth down there on the curving Central Plain, among mysteries and wonders now receding inexorably beyond the reach of man. Whatever honors and achievements the future brought him, for the rest of his life he would be haunted by a sense of anticlimax and the knowledge of opportunities missed.

So he told himself; but even then, he should have known better.

And on far-off Earth, Dr. Carlisle Perera had as yet told no one of how he had wakened from a restless sleep with the message from his subconscious echoing in his brain:

The Ramans do everything in threes.
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Given the sack of cack (actually several sacks) that was the return of the Ramans I don't think this one should count.
 
Charles Darwin:

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.
 
I also like the closing lines of "Smileys People" very much:

Peter Guillam put his arm around Smiley. "you won George". "Did i"? Smiley replied. "Well i suppose i did".......
 
“All was quiet in the deep dark wood. The mouse found a nut and the nut was good.”
 
Wow...just re-found this thread. May it rise again! I just had to add:

"At that moment there crossed over the bridge an almost unending stream of traffic." Franz Kafka, The Judgement

The story itself has always given me such an uncanny feeling, and the closing lines seem almost mysterious, it adds perfectly to the affect of the piece. Also interesting is how the line is usually translated. In most copies I've read, it's usually written as "At that moment an almost unending stream of traffic was crossing over the bridge," but I personally dislike the sound of that construction and find it less accurate to the original German:

"In diesem Augenblick ging über die Brücke ein geradezu unendlicher Verkehr."
 
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"And AC said, 'LET THERE BE LIGHT!'

And there was light..."
The Last Question



"You misunderstand, I am the master."
Farewell to the Master
 
"Jonas and I will see that no spider ever comes near you. Oh Constance," I said, "we are so happy."
 
Alferd_Packer said:
I was going to suggest:

"So it goes."

But I don't think that that is the last line in the book.
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I was thinking the same thing, but I can't think of the book. Not Slaughterhouse 5. I was thinking Breakfast of Cahmpions, but then I think that ends "Make me young!" It seems one book ends with that line. Timequake, if nothing else. But I think it was something earlier. But not too early.

Hocus Pocus had pictues bombs or tombstones or something representing all the women he had sex with. It wasn't Blue Beard, or Galapagos, or Deadeye Dick. Jailbird? Although I think that ended with a sucicide note written on a scrape of paper.

Slapstick? That could work as an ending for Slapstick. I forget how it ends. If not that, then Palm Sunday (but that would be a lame ending for that book).

I'll have to dig into my books.
 
The shark swam out to his deepest waters and brooded in the cold clean currents. He was very hungry that season.
- A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M Miller
 
He vanished, and left me appalled; for I knew, and realized, that all he had said was true.
 
"Bad . . dream. Thought . . I was . . dead."
"Just a dream, Beloved." You cannot die."
 
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