One of the most famous last lines in literary history is: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
But how many others do you know?
For today’s Thursday Thirteen I’m doing something a little different, something a little fun, something that will test your literary knowledge and make you both think and smirk in equal measure.
Listed below are thirteen famous closing lines from thirteen (very) famous books…all you have to do is work out which novel each line comes from. Simple, eh? :)
1. “He might wish and wish and never get it – the beauty and the loving in the world!”
2. “Her work was done.”
3. “It is a different tale altogether, and if it all goes well, I may have a shot at telling it one of these days,”
4. “I curl up, desperately clutching the flat foil balloon and Taylor’s handkerchief, and surrender myself to my grief.”
5. “His own words are a pledge of this:- “My Master,” he says, “has forewarned me. Daily he announces more distinctly,–‘Surely I come quickly!’ and hourly I more eagerly respond,–‘Amen; even so come, Lord Jesus!'”
6. “And the ashes blew towards us with the salt wind from the sea.”
7. “Now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on Earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before,”
8. “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.”
9. “O God – please give him back! I shall keep asking You.”
10. “I thought of Ashley, on the other side of that ocean, and wondered what she was doing right now, and hoped that she was well, and happy, and maybe thinking of me, and then I just stood there, grinning like a fool, and took a deep, deep breath of that sharp, smoke scented air and raised my arms to the open sky, and said, ‘Ha!'”
11. “No glot…C’lom Fliday”
12. “Taking the pigtail in one of his paws, he pressed it warmly to his wet moustache.”
13. “Are there any questions?”
So, how many do you know? Let me know in the comments field below and be sure to share your own favourite last lines :)
Note: for your information, two of my personal favourites are lines (6) and (10).
All that I am, all that I ever was... 