I have a wretched habit. I read read read, dig into a story, crave the proper delivery of a tale—but my fingers always claw their way to the final page, so that I might sneak a glance of a book's last line long before I finish. I can't help myself.
Often it's entertaining to see where an author will take a story, how the narrative will reach that final climactic moment when the reader slaps the book shut—or slowly lets the pages close back upon themselves, depending on the mood—and breathes deeply.
I spent some time with the bookshelf today, flipping through some of my favorite books, and I've come up with a short list of excellent last-liners. These are some of my favs—in no particular order. See if you can figure out where they came from (there's a list at the bottom if you get stumped). What are some of your favorite last lines?
1. For some minutes, before she fell into a deep, dreamless sleep, she just lay quiet, smiling at the ceiling.
2. The waves broke on the shore.
3. He says that he will never die.
4. It was "My Darling Clementine," a good song.
5. Today, Kavalerov, is your turn to sleep with Anichka. Hurrah!
6. And silently they walked on, arms linked, holding each other tightly.
7. We were alone with the quiet day, and his little heart, dispossessed, had stopped.
8. She looked up and across the barn, and her lips came together and smiled mysteriously.
9. Eusabio and the Tesuque boys went quietly away to tell their people; and the next morning the old Archbishop lay before the high altar in the church he had built.
10. After Passover he became a Jew.
11. And somewhere the stinging smell of burning leaves.
12. At last he made Charley understand that he wasn't supposed to talk to him.
13. The old man was dreaming about the lions.
14. It was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan.
1. Franny and Zooey — J.D. Salinger 2. The Waves — Virginia Woolf 3. Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West — Cormac McCarthy 4. Gringos — Charles Portis 5. Envy — Yuri Olesha 6 Mysteries — Knut Hamsun 7. The Turn of the Screw — Henry James 8. The Grapes of Wrath — John Steinbeck 9. Death Comes for the Archbishop — Willa Cather 10. The Assistant — Bernard Malamud 11. The Magus — John Fowles 12. The 42nd Parallel — John Dos Passos 13. The Old Man and The Sea — Ernest Hemingway 14. Moby Dick — Herman Melville
