'", "I lost track after a while, happy to be home, weeping for my father, and thinking about what was next. Even today, Chopins final image of sensuous natural beauty is deeply unsettling. His story about a reformed miser was an immediate bestseller, and, a few years later, he began offering public readings that attracted enormous crowds in England and America. Lorrie Moore, one of the best short story writers alive, once said, The end of a story is really everything, and for many years it seemed she had abandoned novel writing altogether. ", "Later on he will understand how some men so loved her, that they did dare much for her sake. His mix of treacly self-pity, witty cynicism and clinical depression speaks for millions of lonely people forced to endure a world of phonies. And us so happy. ", Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Rebecca Wells, "And so farewell from your little droog. I like the way that sounds. There is deep, delicious irony in this line. ", "Very few castaways can claim to have survived so long at sea as Mr. Patel, and none in the company of an adult Bengal tiger. The Road, by Cormac McCarthy (2006). The line also offers up a little hope for Rick, who just sent the love of his life away. By entering your email and clicking Sign Up, you're agreeing to let us send you customized marketing messages about us and our advertising partners. . Not love, necessarily, but a protective form of kinship. He's asked what it is, to which he replies "the stuff that dreams are made of.". ", "And the ashes blew towards us with the salt wind from the sea. people dont do such things. A few years later, Chopin ran right up against those same stultifying expectations in her last novel, The Awakening, about a wife and mother who falls in love with another man and begins to imagine a different life. The first lines of Leo Tolstoy's 1873 novel are some of the most famous of all time. h'd. Now my spirit is going; The most excellently crafted, strange, funny and ambiguous ending I have ever met: They said, please, please make love with Helen, we require an assertion of value, we are frightened. Ferris Bueller's Day Off "Life moves pretty fast. Like Fitzgerald's final lines, Cather's provide a poignant thesis statement. Chinatown was released in 1974, when Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal were on the US's collective mind. Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, ", RELATED: 13 Best Shark Movies To Watch This Summer (That Aren't Jaws). ", "It was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan. In this closing scene, the lovely Lady Brett tempts Jake once again to imagine what a damned good time they could have had. The narrative comes to us as a sprawling letter written by John Ames, a 77-year-old Congregationalist minister who fears he might die soon. For generations of us, this is the first final line that knocked our booties off. Repetition and cynicism may have reduced Tiny Tims final prayer to a saccharine cliche, but the tale of lives reformed and saved has lost none of its real sweetness. 4 min. ", "'Rest assured, our father, rest assured. Most superhero stories end triumphantly with the good guy taking down the villain and receiving public adoration as a result. (Caliban, Act 3 Scene 2) Our revels now are ended. For the first time they had done something out of Love. That this sentence is the last line from Cheever's last novel makes it even more of a quaint, humble nod to his role as a teller of quiet, suburban stories. I justgave me a turn." Don't judge. 'Keep going, El,' he says, 'Keep going.' ", A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce, "'God's in his heaven, alls right with the world,' whispered Anne softly. Dont ever tell anybody anything. 11. A Perfect Day for Bananafish, J.D. Fight Club's ending scene is seriously audacious, offering a somewhat bleak outlook for the character going forward. Rate this book. We follow them across hundreds of thousands of words, but the final line can make or break a book. Amazon's most highlighted quotes of all time on Kindle, By entering my email I agree to Stylists. But it was another girl, young and new to the city, fiddling with her keys. His testimony, sealed with that line from King Lear, is enough to convert anyone to the power of great fiction. Here are 23 final lines that I have never forgotten. For a movie as fantastical as Back to the Future, there could be no more perfect final words, and it's not because they set up a sequel. Their land will then be re-watered, leading to growth and prosperity for the new owners. A flubbed dismount sullies even the most awe-inspiring routine. 'And here is Toto, too. An entire novel can be ruined by a disappointing ending, but by the same token, an entire novel can be made by a wonderful one. About confronting the end?! Only after getting away from it for a while does she realize just how happy she is there. To honour it, we have curated eight thought-provoking lines from some of the world's most famous plays- from Macbeth to Harry Potter And The Cursed Child. Then she feels a pressure on her hand and he speaks his first words for a week. And they can kiss my sharries. said, watching her hand. ", A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali, Gil Courtemanche, "'When the day shall come, that we do part,' he said softly, and turned to look at me, 'if my last words are not I love you yell ken it was because I didna have time.'". Most visually representative ending to a novel: this way this way this way this way this way this way this way out this way out O, 17. You are also agreeing to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Rick speaks it later in the movie to bid Ilsa farewell and the odd, unsentimental phrase has come to be one of the most romantic . 5. Although two centuries have passed since Dr. Victor Frankenstein turned loose into the world a depraved wretch, his creatures plaintive cry still moves anyone who has a beating heart. 8. Marty asks if there are roads in the future, to which Doc (Christopher Lloyd) replies, "Roads? ", The Time Traveler's Wife, Audrey Niffenegger, "The old man was dreaming about the lions. ", "With the Gardiners, they were always on the most intimate terms. Salinger. ", Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak, "I wrote at the start that this was a record of hate, and walking there beside Henry towards the evening glass of beer, I found the one prayer that seemed to serve the winter mood: O God, You've done enough, You've robbed me of enough, I'm too tired and old to learn to love, leave me alone forever. A character in one of Jess Walters novels says, A book can only end one of two ways: truthfully or artfully. Alas, most dont end truthfully or artfully, but there are rare exceptions: novels that conclude with such gracefully calibrated language that we close the back cover and feel physically imprinted, as though the words were pressed into us by a weight we can hardly fathom. ", "And here she is, herself, Clarissa, not Mrs. Dalloway anymore; there is no one now to call her that. "She was seventy-five and she was going to make some changes in her life. 6 on PBSs Great American Reads. But like several of our most popular books Im looking at you, To Kill a Mockingbird its immortality has been buttressed by an exceptionally memorable film adaptation. 01. of 10. No wonder she dreams of going "somewhere over the rainbow." But over the old man's head they looked at each other and smiled. "She closes her eyes again and I begin to sing softly: Hoping that this time it will remain a lullaby. Here are the 15 most highlighted Shakespeare quotes. It's an action-filled finale that leads to Neo's poignant last words. 1. Play. Of course, former slaves and historians had described the horrors of slavery before, but nearly 125 years after Emancipation, Morrison made the psychological legacy of the Souths peculiar institution palpable as no other book ever had. Aside from the obvious reference to Beauty and the Beast, the line is powerful because it, ironically enough, humanizes Kong a little. He convinces Lt. Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman) to let him take responsibility for the murders to avoid the dispiriting consequences. Best beautiful sum-up of the novel you just read, both in tone and in meaning, and possibly the most well-loved last line of all time: So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. Go on my son! ", The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway, "Whatever our struggles and triumphs, however we may suffer them, all too soon they bleed into a wash, just like watery ink on paper. ", "It begins like this: Barrabs came to us by sea", "He now has more patients than the devil himself could handle; the authorities treat him with deference and public opinion supports him. His opponent duly humiliated, Al turns to the throng of spectators and gleefully announces "Hey, everybody! The Handmaids Tale, by Margaret Atwood (1985), If you havent read Atwoods dystopian novel since it was first published, you may have forgotten what follows the story of Offreds resistance to the Republic of Gilead. ", "His body stirs beneath the sheets. ", A Hundred and One Days: A Baghdad Journal, Asne Seierstad, "It was then that I began to sit on my bed and stare out at the nibbling squirrels, and to make up powems from intense abstraction, hour after unmarked hour, imagination scarcely faltering once, rhythm hardly skipping a beat, while sisters called me, suns rose and fell, and the poems I made, which I never remembered, were the first and last of that time", "And presently, like a circling typhoon, the sounds of battle began to return. During its initial release in 1999, Fight Club was widely misunderstood. They spark interest by stating a hard truth that seemingly comes from deep within the narrator's (or writer's) soul. Scholars of Elizabethan drama believe that William Shakespeare wrote at least 38 plays between 1590 and 1612. "Oh, poor,. As the movie wraps up, Somerset, in voiceover, says, "Ernest Hemingway once wrote, 'The world is a fine place and worth fighting for.' The movie lines so famous you forgot where they came from. and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes. What was the last line? ", "Slowly, very slowly, like two unhurried compass needles, the feet turned towards the right; north, north-east, south-east, south, south-south-west; then paused, and, after a few seconds, turned as unhurriedly back towards the left. When a film has the perfect final line, the audience goes home on a high, and these are some of the very best examples of that. James and the Giant Peach. Quiz: whose review is it anyway? written and illustrated by Maurice Sendak (1963). What Jack tells Marla at the end of the film underscores the primary idea behind the story which is that he has lost himself and can't quite find his way back. Let me cry, my love. I am serious, and dont call me Shirley. The father of the four March sisters is just a minor character in Louisa May Alcotts beloved Little Women (1868), but Geraldine Brooks put him at the center of her historical novel March, which won a Pulitzer Prize. ", "But wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on the top of the Forest a little boy and his Bear will always be playing. The Maltese Falcon has a plot that confuses a lot of viewers, at least on first viewing. Although it inspired considerable condemnation at the time, its now recognized as one of the earliest modernist novels and a foundational feminist text. Sometimes, famous last lines can be more famous than the work they come from. ", "We each owe a death, there are no exceptions, I know that, but sometimes, oh God, the Green Mile is so long. Some Like It Hot came out in 1959, a time when subjects such as sexual/gender identity and cross-dressing were still very much taboo onscreen. ", "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. '", "Archie, for one, watched the mouse. ", "There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothing could be done about it, and if you can't fix it, you've got to stand it. . Henry wanted to become a mobster specifically so he wouldn't have to live life as an average Joe. Long Day's Journey Into Night by Eugene O'Neill This autobiographical play about O'Neill's young adulthood scorches from start to finish. ", "The knife came down, missing him by inches, and he took off. Torn between two very different men, Madeleine endures real tragedy before finally correcting her course, which we, her desperate fans, cant know for sure until that very last word. Here she is with another hour before her. The Matrix, released in 1999, dazzled audiences with its then-groundbreaking visuals and trippy philosophical elements. After a near-catastrophic experience that nearly erases his own existence, Marty McFly (Michael J. Osgood announces his intention to marry Daphne, at which point Jerry rips off the wig and exposes himself as a man. His enemy in this case is Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges), his late father's old business partner, who also manages Stark Industries. Ominous and syntactically exciting, this final line brings Conrad's dark novel full circle. She responds by shooting him. ", "For Siddalee Walker, the need to understand has passed, at least for the moment. A few quotes stand out, whether for their wit, the poetic elegance with which they ponder love, or their heartbreakingly accurate depiction of anguish. ", "She had started to cry softly. It's virtually impossible not to tear up in this touching, heartfelt moment. Professor Pieixoto describes the challenges of transcribing the story weve just read from 30 cassette tapes found in an army footlocker. Stock-still at their desks, novelists face a similar demand for a perfectly choreographed last move. Make fun all you want, but after everything that Harry went through, this may be the most well-deserved last line weve ever read: The scar had not pained Harry for nineteen years. Charlotte was both. A fitting conclusion to a book about globalization, and its power to rapidly change the world. I kissed her a few times on the brow. "'Excellently observed,' answered Candide; 'but we must cultivate our garden. ", "She watched as Sandy Forsyth walked across the talmac towards them, smiling like an eager curious schoolboy as he lifted his face to the sunny English afternoon. The point, driven home so forcefully in those five words, is that corruption is so deeply ingrained in the situation Jake is investigating that he's wasting his time trying to expose or change it. Americans have consistently called Mitchells Pulitzer Prize-winning novel one of their very favorites. Not so Gilead, the first book in Robinsons Pulitzer Prize-winning trilogy about two families in Iowa. Helen came and embraced me. It touches on the passing of youth and of more innocent times in life, but it also offers hope by pointing out that sharing toys helps keep the magic of play alive. All that remained of the German regiment was a little cloud of dust. Advertisement Famous Last Lines in Movies Quiz. ", A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini, "But this is how Paris was in the early days when we were very poor and very happy. The land is not to be sold.' The Catcher in the Rye , J.D. Egan's theme of using music and sounds to convey nostalgia is wrapped up neatly here, and she paints the characters' lives as cyclical, like the playing of a favorite record. The audience is told he's offensive to Smails and the others because he's brash and tacky, but the unspoken implication is that he's unwelcome because he's Jewish. I am invisible, the unnamed narrator says at the start, simply because people refuse to see me, but by the end, no one could ever ignore him. All kinds of spot-on criticisms have been leveled against the novel (and producer David Selznicks 1939 movie) for its romanticized racism. Antigone (The Theban Plays, #3) by. 12. The Falls, George Saunders (From Pastoralia ). Matter of fact, I think this the youngest us ever felt. His comment is a sick joke, which is perfectly in keeping with Fight Club's entire aesthetic. 'Everything's ready. All of them wrap their respective movies up beautifully. At the end, an attempt to kill the shark takes place. That final line, with its simple, imploring repetition, concludes the novel with just the right spirit of affirmation and regret. On the ground, a police officer looks at the dead ape and says that the planes killed him. Filmmaker Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong) corrects the officer, saying "no, it wasn't the airplanes. In 1816, Lord Byron suggested to friends vacationing with him in Switzerland that they each write a ghost story. John Huston's 1941 noir masterpiece The Maltese Falcon is the story of private detective Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart), who is investigating a case involving a quest by multiple individuals to procure a falcon statue that is encrusted with jewels. ", "She opened the door wide and let him into her life again. quiz. Tarantino is known for several stellar films, and its status as a masterpiece isn't often contested. See if you recognise these closing lines of 10 great plays, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning, 'You bull's pizzle': match Shakespeare's insults to his plays quiz. Moments. But Jake isnt having it anymore. No name can be read there. "From Oh What a Paradise It Seems by John Cheever. The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold (2002). The opening sentence in a story is often considered the most important because it sets the tone for everything that's still to come. 1. Of course, Eugenides is also echoing the end of James Joyces Ulysses, whose last extraordinary sentence is about 4,000 words long and ends with Molly Blooms boundless enthusiasm: yes I said yes I will Yes., Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell (1949). The cults of the famous and the dead. In fact, he confesses that the universality of his experience frightens him. Renault, for starters, has come around and decided to take up the Allied cause. Four decades later, I can still feel the shock of reaching the end of Steinbecks novel about an Oklahoma family traveling to California in search of work. From classics such as George Orwells Animal Farm to L. Frank Baums The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Stylistrounds up the most memorable 100 last lines from literature ever written. He's a silent guardian. Lapsing into the bland objectivity of academia, the professor warns his fellow scholars to be cautious about passing moral judgment upon the Gileadean. Anyone who has ever seen Se7en cannot forget its harrowing ending. ", Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain, "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. The butterfly motif brings the concept of "lightness" to life; this final vignette captures the mood of the book perfectly. It was a bestseller when it was published during the Great Depression, and just last year, it ranked No. If not, I'll die your maid: to be your fellow. Everything will crumble. "Then starting home, he walked toward the trees, and under them, leaving behind him the big sky, the whisper of wind voices in the wind-bent wheat. That contrast is most evident in the final moments. ", "We sat there for a long time, till the crowd around us thinned, till the sun shifted and the light changed. A vague last line casts a shadow over the entire novel, whereas a powerful and poignant one will keep you wondering for weeks to come. "Whatever we had missed, we possessed together the precious, the incommunicable past. The Usual Suspects isn't just a movie; it's a magic trick. From classics such as George Orwell's Animal Farm to L. Frank Baum's T he Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Stylist rounds up the most memorable 100 last lines from literature ever written. And so she does. Tony Stark, never one to do things in a conventional manner, defies tradition by letting the world know who the iron-clad hero they've been following really is. ". After the gray and blood-soaked pages that came before, its shockingly beautiful and places humanitys horrors against the boundless life of the Earth. Beloved.. "From Ulysses by James Joyce. ", RELATED: 10 Most Iconic Shots In Goodfellas. But which Shakespearean drama opens with the line, "I wonder how the king escaped our hands?" Take our quiz and see how well you know your Shakespeare. "He loved Big Brother. Roy Scheider's Brody spends the movie trying to get the citizens of Amity Islandespecially the town's mayorto take his shark warnings seriously. The mystery ends with a revelation of incest, the death of a major character, and a lot of bad people still left to do their thing. "From White Noise by Don DeLillo. I play video games. A Christmas Carol, Shakespeare's Opening Lines: The Quiz If music be the food of love, play on; Give me excess of it. The Dark Knight, directed by Christopher Nolan, is perhaps the best Batman story ever committed to film. It'd be a glaring omission to not mention Fitzgerald's oft-quoted thesis about the American Dream. The tales of the supernatural and the extraterrestrial. He wanted money and power and influence, and he had those things. After all, tomorrow is another day. "And she comes to you, and she does not speak, and the others do not notice her, and she takes your hand, and you ready yourself to die, eyes open, aware this is all an illusion, a last aroma cast up by the chemical stew that is your brain, which will soon cease to function, and there will be nothing, and you are ready, ready to die well, ready to die like a man, like a woman, like a human, for despite all else you have loved, you have loved your father and your mother and your brother and your sister and your son and yes, your ex-wife, and you have loved the pretty girl, you have been beyond yourself, and so you have courage, and you have dignity, and you have calmness in the face of terror, and awe, and the pretty girl holds your hand, and you contain her, and this book, and me writing it, and I too contain you, who may not yet even be born, you inside me inside you, though not in a creepy way, and so may you, may I, may we, so may we all of us confront the end. LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT by Eugene O'Neill [1956]. He may have been a beast, but he was a beast with heart. If he ever had a reason to hate the water, it would be after the harrowing experience he's just had. I think its the tension between the countrysides utter destruction and the fathers adamant love, all rendered in a style as spare as a sun-bleached bone. I been there before. Hamlet's dying 'The rest is silence,' is the perfect end of anything. Salinger (From Nine Stories ). It determines if parting is such sweet sorrow or a thudding disappointment. A Gate at the Stairs, by Lorrie Moore (2009), Novels and short stories make different demands on their forms and their readers. Even the novels greatest fans have complained about those tedious final chapters, in which Tom and Huck plot to free Jim from the Phelpses farm. Morrisons classic novel about slavery begins with this enigmatic line: 124 was spiteful. We come to understand that animus slowly, as the story of a murdered baby moves backward and forward in time, before and after the Civil War. If you do, you start missing everybody. Tracing the very short career of one of England's greatest poets. By Benjamin Voigt. For many, John Keats is the prototype of artistic genius. '"From Candide by Voltaire. From classics such as George Orwells Animal Farm to L. Frank Baums The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and Jung Changs Wild Swans, weve scoured the Stylist book shelf for the best closing lines (or, in some cases to give context, the best final few lines) ever written. Famous Last Words in theatrical productions. Ending an entire book in the middle of a sentence is a bold and playful choice. Surely we have learned by now that such judgments are of necessity culture-specific. The lessons of the past, he notes chillingly, are obscured by the passage of time. We arrive at the final page in a state of utter desolation. Following a lengthy series of complications, Joe essentially tells Norma that her dream will never come to fruition. I carry a lot of scars. The miracle vitamins, the cures for cancer, the remedies for obesity. One of the most-quoted lines from Casablanca, "Here's looking at you, kid," is one that Humphrey Bogart ad-libbed during the flashback scenes of Rick and Ilsa falling in love in Paris. So many heroes invent personas specifically to prevent anyone from discovering their true identity. His name, along with Shakespeare 's, is nearly synonymous with English verse. This is certainly one of the most famous lines of dialoguefinal or notin cinematic history. ", Anne of Green Gables, Lucy Maud Montgomery, "And so we stayed out in the garden of the old house until we couldnt see to kick a ball, laughing in the gathering twilight, my mother and son, my wife and our daughter, making the most of the good weather and all the days that were left, our little game watched only by next doors cat, and every star in the heavens.