A few weeks ago, ArtsHub presented 20 famous opening lines in books, so it makes sense to offer the corollary: 20 famous closing lines! Final words can have a lasting impression on readers but some are more prosaic than poetic. Once again, it’s a mix of classic and modern titles, so let’s see how much of a bookworm you really are…
1. ‘Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?’
2. ‘The eyes and the faces all turned themselves toward me, and guiding myself by them, as by a magical thread, I stepped into the room.’
3. ‘In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.’
4. ‘Are there any questions?’
5. ‘I wish you all a long and happy life.’
6. ‘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.’
7. “He is coming, and I am here.”
8. ‘The old man was dreaming about the lions.’
9. ‘Later on he will understand how some men so loved her, that they did dare much for her sake.’
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10. ‘Up out of the lampshade, startled by the overhead light, flew a large nocturnal butterfly that began circling the room. The strains of the piano and violin rose up weakly from below.’
11. ‘But that is the beginning of a new story – the story of the gradual renewal of a man, the story of his gradual regeneration, of his passing from one world into another, of his initiation into a new unknown life. That might be the subject of a new story, but our present story is ended.’
12. ‘Oh, my girls, however long you may live, I never can wish you a greater happiness than this.’
13. ‘I’m fine. I have bad dreams but I never saw Mister Duck again. I play video games. I smoke a little dope. I got my thousand-yard stare. I carry a lot of scars. I like the way that sounds. I carry a lot of scars.’
14. ‘He was soon borne away
 by the waves and lost in darkness and distance.’
15. ‘The knife came down, missing him by inches, and he took off.’
16. ‘An excellent year’s progress.’
17. ‘He turned away to give them time to pull themselves together; and waited, allowing his eyes to rest on the trim cruiser in the distance.’
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18. ‘For all to be accomplished, for me to feel less lonely, all that remained to hope was that on the day of my execution there should be a huge crowd of spectators and that they should greet me with howls of execration.’
19. ‘And the ashes blew towards us with the salt wind from the sea.’
20. ‘He reached the top of the bank in a single, powerful leap. Hazel followed; and together they slipped away, running easily down through the wood, where the first primroses were beginning to bloom.’
Scroll down for the answers!
1. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. 2. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. 3. The Road by Cormac McCarthy. 4. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. 5. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. 6. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. 7. The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. 8. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. 9. Dracula by Bram Stoker. 10. The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. 11. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. 12. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. 13. The Beach by Alex Garland. 14. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. 15. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. 16. Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding. 17. Lord of the Flies by William Golding. 18. The Stranger by Albert Camus. 19. Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier. 20. Watership Down by Richard Adams.
