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The 100 most powerful and poignant closing lines from literature

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Abi Jackson
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closing lines of books

From classics such as George Orwell'southward Animal Farm to L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Sorcerer of Oz, Stylist rounds upward the nigh memorable 100 last lines from literature ever written.

Don't gauge a book by its encompass - instead, try and wait for the final line.

Following our massively popular and lovingly selected list of the 100 best opening lines from books, information technology'southward at present fourth dimension for the closing lines to polish. Because, whilst the showtime of a book may get all the glory, information technology's the ending that actually stays with you. A vague last line casts a shadow over the unabridged novel, whereas a powerful and poignant i will continue yous wondering for weeks to come up.

From classics such equally George Orwell'south Animal Farm to 50. Frank Baum'southward The Wonderful Sorcerer of Oz and Jung Chang's Wild Swans, we've scoured the Stylist book shelf for the all-time closing lines (or, in some cases to requite context, the best concluding few lines) ever written.

If yous don't want to know the final thought of a book you lot're yet to read, await away at present…

  • The Great Gatsby

    "And then nosotros vanquish on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

    The Great Gatsby, F.Scott Fitzgerald

  • Gone with the Wind

    "After all, tomorrow is some other day."

    Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell

  • To Kill a Mockingbird

    "He turned out the low-cal and went into Jem'south room. He would be there all night, and he would be at that place when Jem waked upwardly in the forenoon."

    To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee

  • The Bell Jar

    "The eyes and faces all turned themselves towards me, and guiding myself past them, as by a magical thread, I stepped into the room."

    The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath

  • Animal Farm

    "The creatures outside looked from sus scrofa to man, and from man to grunter, and from squealer to man over again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."

    Animal Subcontract, George Orwell

  • Life of Pi

    "Very few castaways can claim to have survived and so long at sea every bit Mr. Patel, and none in the visitor of an adult Bengal tiger."

    Life of Pi, Yann Martel

  • The House At Pooh Corner

    "Just wherever they go, and whatsoever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on the top of the Forest a petty boy and his Deport will always exist playing."

    The Firm At Pooh Corner, A.A. Milne

  • The Time Traveler's Wife

    "He is coming, and I am here."

    The Time Traveler'south Married woman, Audrey Niffenegger

  • The One-time Homo and the Bounding main

    "The old man was dreaming nearly the lions."

    The Old Homo and the Ocean, Ernest Hemingway

  • Memoirs of a Geisha

    "Whatsoever our struggles and triumphs, however we may suffer them, all too soon they bleed into a launder, just like watery ink on paper."

    Memoirs of a Geisha, Arthur Golden

  • Pride and Prejudice

    "With the Gardiners, they were always on the most intimate terms. Darcy, too as Elizabeth, really loved them; and they were both ever sensible of the warmest gratitude towards the persons who, past bringing her into Derbyshire, had been the means of uniting them."

    Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

  • P.S. I Dearest Yous

    "In the meantime, she would just alive."

    P.Due south. I Honey You, Cecelia Ahern

  • 1984

    "He loved Big Brother."

    1984, George Orwell

  • Charlotte's Web

    "Information technology is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both."

    Charlotte's Web, E.B. White

  • The Catcher in the Rye

    "Information technology's funny. Don't ever tell anybody anything. If yous do, you start missing everybody."

    The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger

  • Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

    "For Siddalee Walker, the need to sympathise has passed, at least for the moment. All that was left was love and wonder."

    Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Rebecca Wells

  • A Clockwork Orange

    "And and so farewell from your piffling droog. And to all others in this story profound shooms of lip-music brrrrr. And they can kiss my sharries. Merely you, O my brothers, retrieve sometimes thy footling Alex that was. Amen. And all that cal."

    A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess

  • A Tale of Two Cities

    "It is a far, far ameliorate thing that I practice, than I accept ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."

    A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens

  • Dracula

    "Later on on he will empathize how some men and then loved her, that they did cartel much for her sake."

    Dracula, Bram Stoker

  • Where the Wild Things Are

    "Max stepped into his private boat and waved cheerio and sailed dorsum over a year and in and out of weeks and through a mean solar day and into the dark of his very own room where he found his supper waiting for him—and it was nonetheless hot."

    Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak

  • The Terminate of the Matter

    "I wrote at the start that this was a record of hate, and walking there beside Henry towards the evening glass of beer, I constitute the i prayer that seemed to serve the winter mood: O God, You've washed enough, You lot've robbed me of enough, I'chiliad too tired and old to acquire to dearest, leave me alone forever."

    The Cease of the Thing, Graham Greene

  • The Colour Regal

    "Only I don't recollect us feel one-time at all. And us so happy. Matter of fact, I think this the youngest the states ever felt."

    The Color Imperial, Alice Walker

  • The Unbearable Lightness of Being

    "Upwardly out of the lampshade, startled by the overhead light, flew a large nocturnal butterfly that began circling the room. The strains of the pianoforte and violin rose upwards weakly from below."

    The Unbearable Lightness of Beingness, Milan Kundera

  • Wild Swans

    "As I left Red china farther and farther behind, I looked out of the window and saw a bang-up universe beyond the plane's silvery fly. I took 1 more glance over my past life, so turned to the future. I was eager to embrace the world."

    Wild Swans, Jung Chang

  • Origin of Species

    "At that place is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into ane; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from then elementary a beginning endless forms most cute and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved."

    Origin of Species, Charles Darwin

  • Brokeback Mountain

    "There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, just nix could exist done most information technology, and if you can't fix it, y'all've got to stand it."

    Brokeback Mountain, Annie Proulx

  • The Makioka Sisters

    "Yukiko's diarrhoea persisted through the twenty-sixth, and was a problem on the train to Tokyo."

    The Makioka Sisters, Junichiro Tanizaki

  • Crime and Punishment

    "But that is the showtime of a new story - the story of the gradual renewal of a homo, the story of his gradual regeneration, of his passing from i world into another, of his initiation into a new unknown life. That might be the discipline of a new story, but our present story is ended."

    Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky

  • Like Water for Chocolate

    "How wonderful the flavour, the aroma of her kitchen, her stories as she prepared the meal, her Christmas Rolls! I don't know why mine never turn out like hers, or why my tears flow so freely when I prepare them - perhaps I am every bit sensitive to onions as Tita, my nifty-aunt, who will keep living as long as there is someone who cooks her recipes."

    Like Water for Chocolate, Laura Esquivel

  • Fiddling Women

    "Oh, my girls, all the same long you may live, I never tin can wish you a greater happiness than this."

    Little Women, Louisa May Alcott

  • Sarah'south Key

    "We sat there for a long time, till the oversupply effectually us thinned, till the dominicus shifted and the light changed. Till we felt our eyes could meet again, without the tears."

    Sarah's Key, Tatiana de Rosnay

  • The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

    "'From the Land of Oz,' said Dorothy gravely. 'And here is Toto, too. And oh, Aunt Em! I'm and then glad to exist at dwelling house again!'"

    The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, 50. Frank Baum

  • The Book Thief

    "A Concluding NOTE FROM YOUR NARRATOR. I am haunted by humans."

    The Book Thief, Markus Zusak

  • The Awakening

    "At that place was the hum of bees, and the musky aroma of pinks filled the air."

    The Awakening, Kate Chopin

  • The Embankment

    "I'grand 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 conduct a lot of scars. I like the way that sounds. I carry a lot of scars."

    The Beach, Alex Garland

  • Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

    "The scar had not pained Harry for nineteen years. All was well."

    Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling

  • Frankenstein

    "He was soon borne abroad 
by the waves and lost in darkness and distance."

    Frankenstein, Mary Shelley

  • Watership Down

    "He reached the top of the bank in a single, powerful leap. Hazel followed; and together they slipped abroad, running easily down through the wood, where the first primroses were beginning to bloom."

    Watership Down, Richard Adams

  • Rebecca

    "And the ashes blew towards us with the table salt air current from the bounding main."

    Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier

  • The Handmaid'south Tale

    "Are at that place whatever questions?"

    The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood

  • Moby Dick

    "It was the stray-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing children, but constitute another orphan."

    Moby Dick, Herman Melville

  • The Kite Runner

    "I ran with the air current blowing in my confront, and a smile equally broad as the valley of Panjsher on my lips. I ran."

    The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini

  • The Stranger

    "For all to be accomplished, for me to experience less lonely, all that remained to hope was that on the day of my execution there should exist a huge crowd of spectators and that they should greet me with howls of execration."

    The Stranger, Albert Camus

  • The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

    "She opened the door wide and let him into her life again."

    The Daughter Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, Stieg Larsson

  • Of Mice and Men

    "Curley and Carlson looked afterward them. And Carlson said, 'Now what the hell ya suppose is eatin' them two guys?'"

    Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck

  • Never Let Me Go

    "I just waited a bit, then turned back to the car, to drive off to wherever information technology was I was supposed to be."

    Never Allow Me Get, Kazuo Ishiguro

  • Moll Flanders

    "My husband remained there some time afterward me to settle our diplomacy, and at kickoff I had intended to go back to him, merely at his desire I altered that resolution, and he is come over to England besides, where we resolve to spend the residue of our years in sincere penitence for the wicked lives we have lived."

    Moll Flanders, Daniel Defoe

  • The Devil Wears Prada

    "And then, while the pretty brunette daughter finished singing her poesy, he buzzed me through like I was someone who mattered."

    The Devil Wears Prada, Lauren Weisberger

  • The Greenish Mile

    "Nosotros each owe a death, there are no exceptions, I know that, but sometimes, oh God, the Green Mile is so long."

    The Greenish Mile, Stephen Male monarch

  • The Historic period of Innocence

    "At that, as if it had been the signal he waited for, Newland Archer got upward slowly and walked back alone to his hotel."

    The Historic period of Innocence, Edith Wharton

  • The Cellist of Sarajevo

    "Her lips move and a moment before the door splinters off its hinges she says, her voice potent and tranquillity, 'My name is Alisa.'"

    The Cellist of Sarajevo, Steven Galloway

  • Middlesex

    "I lost runway afterward a while, happy to be habitation, weeping for my father, and thinking nearly what was next."

    Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides

  • Suite Francaise

    "The men began singing, a grave, tedious song that drifted away into the night. Soon the road was empty. All that remained of the German regiment was a lilliputian cloud of dust."

    Suite Francaise, Irene Nemirovsky

  • A Sunday at the Puddle in Kigali

    "Valcourt is at peace with himself."

    A Sun at the Pool in Kigali, Gil Courtemanche

  • The Fiery Cross

    "'When the day shall come, that we do role,' he said softly, and turned to expect at me, 'if my last words are not 'I love you' – ye'll ken it was because I didna have time.'"

    The Fiery Cross, Diana Gabaldon

  • Chocolat

    "She closes her optics over again and I brainstorm to sing softly:

    '''V'la l'bon vent, v'la fifty'joli vent

    Five'la l'bon vent, ma mie m'appelle.'''

    Hoping that this fourth dimension it volition remain a lullaby. That this time the wind will non hear. That this fourth dimension - please just this once - it volition get out without united states."

    Chocolat, Joanne Harris

  • Take hold of-22

    "The knife came down, missing him by inches, and he took off."

    Catch-22, Joseph Heller

  • Wuthering Heights

    "I lingered round them, under that beneficial heaven; watched the moths fluttering among the heath, and hare-bells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers, for the sleepers in that quiet earth."

    Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte

  • The Hand That First Held Mine

    "His body stirs below the sheets. He twists his head from one side to the other. His optics, she sees, are open up. And so she feels a force per unit area on her manus and he speaks his first words for a calendar week. 'Keep going, El,' he says, 'Go along going.' And then she does."

    The Hand That Offset Held Mine, Maggie O'Farrell

  • The Long Goodbye

    ''I never saw any of them over again — except the cops. No style has yet been invented to say farewell to them."

    The Long Good day, Raymond Chandler

  • Winter in Madrid

    "She watched equally Sandy Forsyth walked beyond the talmac towards them, grinning like an eager curious schoolboy as he lifted his face to the sunny English afternoon."

    Winter in Madrid, C. J. Sansom

  • The Pianist

    "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 concealment, leaden sky."

    The Pianist: The Extraordinary True Story of One Man'south Survival in Warsaw, 1939-1945, Wladyslaw Szpilman

  • Don't Allow'southward Go to the Dogs Tonight

    "This is not a full circle. It'south Life carrying on. It's the next breath nosotros all accept. It'south the choice nosotros make to get on with it."

    Don't Allow's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Babyhood, Alexandra Fuller

  • Midnight's Children

    "Aye, they will trample me underfoot, the numbers marching one two 3, four hundred million five hundred vi, reducing me to specks of voiceless dust, but as, in all skillful fourth dimension, they will trample my son who is not my son, and his son who volition not be his, and his who will non be his, until the thousand and showtime generation, until a thousand and one midnights accept bestowed their terrible gifts and a thousand and ane children have died, considering it is the privilege and the curse of midnight'southward children to be both masters and victims of their times, to forsake privacy and be sucked into the annihilating whirlpool of the multitudes, and to be unable to live or die in peace."

    Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie

  • A Hundred and One Days

    "The white floodlight shines through the wispy tule and makes sparse shadows. A sudden breeze over the Tigris forms a tiny whirlwind. It floats through the balcony doors and makes the curtains dance."

    A Hundred and Ane Days: A Baghdad Journal, Asne Seierstad

  • Cider With Rosie

    "It was and then that I began to sit on my bed and stare out at the nibbling squirrels, and to make upwardly powems from intense abstraction, hour after unmarked hour, imagination scarcely faltering one time, rhythm hardly skipping a vanquish, while sisters chosen me, suns rose and brutal, and the poems I made, which I never remembered, were the first and terminal of that time…"

    Cider with Rosie, Laurie Lee

  • Vile Bodies

    "And presently, like a circumvoluted typhoon, the sounds of battle began to return."

    Vile Bodies, Evelyn Waugh

  • The House Of The Spirits

    "Information technology begins like this: Barrabás came to us past bounding main…"

    The Firm Of The Spirits, Isabel Allende

  • Madame Bovary

    "He now has more patients than the devil himself could handle; the authorities treat him with deference and public opinion supports him. He has but been awarded the Cross of the Legion of Award."

    Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert

  • A Thousand Splendid Suns

    "But the naming game involves merely male person names, because if it'due south a girl, Laila has already named her."

    A K Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini

  • A Moveable Feast

    "Merely this is how Paris was in the early days when we were very poor and very happy."

    A Moveable Feast, Ernest Hemingway

  • Lord of the Flies

    "He turned abroad to give them time to pull themselves together; and waited, allowing his optics to residuum on the trim cruiser in the distance."

    Lord of the Flies, William Golding

  • Breaking Dawn

    "And then we continued blissfully into this pocket-sized simply perfect slice of our forever."

    Breaking Dawn, Stephenie Meyer

  • The Grapes of Wrath

    "She looked upward and across the barn, and her lips came together and smiled mysteriously."

    The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck

  • The Kitchen God'southward Wife

    "Of course, it's only superstition, just for fun. Only see how fast the smoke rises--oh, fifty-fifty faster when nosotros laugh, lifting our hopes, college and higher."

    The Kitchen God'due south Wife, Amy Tan

  • The Hours

    "And here she is, herself, Clarissa, not Mrs. Dalloway anymore; in that location is no ane at present to call her that. Here she is with another hour before her. 'Come in, Mrs. Brownish,' she says. 'Everything'due south ready.'"

    The Hours, Michael Cunningham

  • The Sound and the Fury

    "The cleaved flower drooped over Ben's fist and his eyes were empty and bluish and serene again as cornice and facade flowed smoothly one time more from left to right, post and tree, window and doorway and signboard each in its ordered place."

    The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner

  • The Proficient World

    "'Residue assured, our begetter, residue assured. The land is not to be sold.' But over the old human's caput they looked at each other and smiled."

    The Skillful Earth, Pearl S. Buck

  • Les Miserables

    "This stone is entirely blank. The but thought in cutting it was of the essentials of the grave, and there was no other care than to make this stone long plenty and narrow enough to comprehend a human being. No proper noun can be read at that place."

    Les Miserables, Victor Hugo

  • Dauntless New World

    "Slowly, very slowly, like two unhurried compass needles, the anxiety turned towards the right; due north, north-due east, south-east, due south, s-due south-due west; then paused, and, afterward a few seconds, turned equally unhurriedly back towards the left. South-south-west, south, south-east, east ... "

    Dauntless New Earth, Aldous Huxley

  • Adventures of Blueberry Finn

    "I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the residue, because Aunt Emerge she's going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I tin't stand it. I been in that location before."

    Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain

  • Atonement

    "Just now I must slumber."

    Atonement, Ian McEwan

  • Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

    "Lastly, she pictured to herself how this same piddling sister of hers would, in the later on-time, be herself a grown woman; and how she would go on, 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 experience with all their simple sorrows, and discover a pleasure in all their simple joys, remembering her ain kid-life, and the happy summer days."

    Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

  • Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

    "When they finally did dare information technology, at first with stolen glances so candid ones, they had to smile. They were uncommonly proud. For the first fourth dimension they had done something out of Honey."

    Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, Patrick Süskind

  • A Portrait of the Artist as a Boyfriend

    "Onetime father, old artificer, stand up me now and ever in practiced stead."

    A Portrait of the Artist as a Boyfriend, James Joyce

  • Bridget Jones's Diary

    "An excellent yr's progress."

    Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding

  • Anne of Greenish Gables

    "'God's in his sky, all's right with the world,' whispered Anne softly."

    Anne of Greenish Gables, Lucy Maud Montgomery

  • Man and Wife

    "And and so we stayed out in the garden of the old firm until we couldn't run across to kick a ball, laughing in the gathering twilight, my mother and son, my wife and our daughter, making the almost of the adept weather and all the days that were left, our little game watched just by next door'south cat, and every star in the heavens."

    Man and Wife, Tony Parsons

  • Norwegian Woods

    "Once again and once again I called out for Midori from the dead centre of this place that was no place."

    Norwegian Woods, Haruki Murakami

  • Emma

    "Just, in spite of these deficiencies, the wishes, the hopes, the confidence, the predictions of the pocket-sized band of true friends who witnessed the ceremony, were fully answered in the perfect happiness of the matrimony."

    Emma, Jane Austen

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  • Slaughter-house-Five

    "One bird said to Billy Pilgrim, 'Poo-tee-weet?'"

    Shambles-V, Kurt Vonnegut

  • White Teeth

    "Archie, for ane, watched the mouse. He watched it stand very still for a second with a smug look as if it exepcted naught less. He watched it scurry away, over his manus. He watched it dash along the table and through the hands of those who wished to pin it down. He watched it bound off the terminate and disappear through an air vent. Go on my son! thought Archie."

    White Teeth, Zadie Smith

  • The Hound of the Baskervilles

    "Might I trouble you then to be ready in one-half an hour, and nosotros tin can stop at Marcini'south for a picayune dinner on the way?"

    The Hound of the Baskervilles, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

  • Any Human Heart

    "My personal rollercoaster. Not and so much a rollercoaster - a rollercoaster'southward likewise polish - a yo-yo rather - a jerking, spinning toy in the hands of a maladroit kid, more like, trying as well hard, too impatiently eager to learn how to operate his new yo-yo."

    Any Homo Eye, William Boyd

  • The Lovely Bones

    "I wish y'all all a long and happy life."

    The Lovely Basic, Alice Sebold

  • Middle of Darkness

    "The offing was barred by a blackness banking concern of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the utmost ends of the earth flowed sombre under an overcast sky — seemed to lead into the center of an immense darkness."

    Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad

  • The Outcast

    "He didn't think about it, he went straight to a seat facing forwards, so that he could see where he was going."

    The Outcast, Sadie Jones

  • Alone in Berlin

    "Because it is written that you reap what yous sow, and the boy had sown good corn."

    Alone in Berlin, Hans Fallada

  • Half of a Yellow Sun

    "She had started to cry softly. Odenigbo took her in his artillery."

    Half of a Yellowish Dominicus, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  • Earlier I Dice

    "Lite falls through the window, falls onto me, into me. Moments. All gathering towards this ane."

    Earlier I Die, Jenny Downham

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