Monday, June 9, 2014

The Writer Will Take Your Questions Now #289 -- Favorite Last Words (Novels)

What are you favorite closing lines and endings from novel?

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

"“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?”
-- Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

"He was soon borne away by the waves, and lost in darkness and distance."
 -- Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus

"She sat staring with her eyes shut, into his eyes, and felt as if she had finally got to the beginning of something she couldn't begin, and she saw him moving farther and farther away, farther and farther into the darkness until he was the pin point of light."
-- Flannery O’Connor, Wise Blood

So much of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see.
-- Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

"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."
-- Kurt Vonngut, Cat's Cradle

"A baby cried, a world began.
"Heart action dropping!"
(Jake? Eunice?) (Here, Boss! Grab on! There! We've got you.) (Is it a boy or a girl?) (Who cares, Johann-it's a baby! 'One for all and all for one!')
An old world vanished and then there was none."
-- Robert Heinlein, I Will Fear No Evil

"On the way downtown I stopped at a bar and had a couple of double Scotches. They didn't do me any good. All they did was make me think of Silver-Wig, and I never saw her again."
-- Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep

"She pulled a gun out of her bag when he was taking her in, and shot him three times. Then she used her last two bullets on herself. Velma was tired of running away."
-- Raymond Chandler, Farewell My Lovely

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