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The Top 25 Best Closing Lines From Books
Some books have a slow burn, but there's nothing wrong with that, because the ending can completely turn your world upside down, for better or worse. Here's MY favourite closing lines...
As a society, we are as obsessed with last words, last images, last meals, last lines etc as we are with first ones (Link article). Here are some of my personal favourites out of books that I have read.
1. 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
- Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (1859)
2. I took her hand in mine, and we went out of the ruined place; and, as the morning mists had risen long ago when I first left the forge, so, the evening mists were rising now, and in all the broad expanse of tranquil light they showed to me, I saw no shadow of another parting from her
- Charles Dickens, Great Expectations (1860-61)
3. This stone is entirely blank. The only thought in cutting it was of the essentials of the grave, and there was no other care than to make this stone long enough and narrow enough to cover a man. No name can be read there
- Victor Hugo, Les Miserables (1862)
4. Lastly, she pictured to herself how this same little sister of hers would, in the after-time, be herself a grown woman; and how she would keep, through all her riper years, the simple and loving heart of her childhood; and how she would gather about her other little children, and make their eyes bright and eager with many a strange tale, perhaps even with the dream of Wonderland of long ago; and how she would feel with all their simple sorrows, and find a pleasure in all their simple joys, remembering her own child-life, and the happy summer days
– Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865)
5. Later on he will understand how some men so loved her, that they did dare much for her sake
- Bram Stoker, Dracula (1897)
6. I’m so glad to be at home again
- L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900)
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7. So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past
- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925)
8. But the sky was bright, and he somehow felt he was headed in the right direction
- E.B. White, Stuart Little (1934)
9. Tomorrow, I’ll think of some way to get him back. After all, tomorrow is another day
- Margaret Mitchell, Gone With The Wind (1936)
10. And the ashes blew towards us with the salt wind from the sea
- Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca (1938)
11. 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
- George Orwell, Animal Farm (1945)
12. He loved Big Brother
- George Orwell, 1984 (1949)
13. It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both
- E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web (1952)
14. Well, I’m back
– J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (1955)
15. So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars will be out, and don’t you know that God is Pooh Bear? The evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what’s going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty
- Jack Kerouac, On the Road (1957)
16. He would be there all night, and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning
- Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird (1960)
17. A dream can be the highest point of a life
- Ben Okri, The Famished Road (1991)
18. Whatever our struggles and triumphs, however we may suffer them, all too soon they bleed into a wash, just like watery ink on paper
- Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha (1997)
19. She closes her eyes again and I begin to sing softly, ”’V’la l’bon vent, v’la l’joli vent V’la l’bon vent, ma mie m’appelle.”’ Hoping that this time it will remain a lullaby. That this time the wind will not hear. That this time - please just this once - it will leave without us
- Joanne Harris, Chocolat (1999)
20. I went on my way. A stormy wind rattled the scrap-iron in the ruins, whistling and howling through the charred cavities of the windows. Twilight came on. Snow fell from the darkening, leaden sky
- Wladyslaw Szpilman, The Pianist: The Extraordinary True Story of One Man’s Survival in Warsaw, 1939-1945 (2000)
21. But now I must sleep - Ian McEwan, Atonement (2001).
22. I ran with the wind blowing in my face, and a smile as wide as the valley of Panjsher on my lips. I ran
- Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner (2003)
23. A LAST NOTE FROM YOUR NARRATOR. I am haunted by humans
- Markus Zusak, The Book Thief (2006)
24. The scar had not pained Harry for nineteen years. All was well
- J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (2007)
25. Her lips move and a moment before the door splinters off its hinges she says, her voice strong and quiet, ‘My name is Alisa
- Steven Galloway, The Cellist of Sarajevo (2009)
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COMMENTS
I would like to put forward the end of "My Booky Wook" by Russell Brand; “The most insightful thing I ever heard, was overheard. I was waiting for a rail replacement bus in Hackney Wick. These two old women weren’t even talking to me - not because I’d offended them, I hadn’t, I’d been angelic at that bus stop, except for the eavesdropping. Rail replacement buses take an eternity, because they think they’re doing you a favour by covering for the absent train, you’ve no recourse. Eventually the bus appeared, on the distant horizon, and one of the women, with the relief and disbelief that often accompanies the arrival of public transport said, ‘Oh look, the bus is coming.’ The other woman - a wise woman, seemingly aware that her words and attitude were potent and poetic enough to form the final sentence in a stranger’s book - paused, then said, ‘The bus was always coming.”
Not exactly sure why, in an article about literary merit, you decided to remove the punctuation from these last sentences..
