Ten Book Tuesday...Bookends
The ending, "...and they all lived happily ever after" is just for fairy tales. Let's finish the year with some other unforgettable final paragraphs and closing lines from some classic novels.
"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."
The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
"As I left China farther and farther behind, I looked out of the window and saw a great universe beyond the plane's silver wing. I took one more glance over my past life, then turned to the future. I was eager to embrace the world."
Wild Swans by Jung Chang
"And the ashes blew towards us with the salt wind from the sea."
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
"Are there any questions?"
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
''I never saw any of them again — except the cops. No way has yet been invented to say goodbye to them."
The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler
“Yes, she thought, laying down her brush in extreme fatigue, I have my vision.”
To the lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
"I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita."
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
"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, and 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'll 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 the 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."
On the road by Jack Kerouac
"Archie, for one, watched the mouse. He watched it stand very still for a second with a smug look as if it exepcted nothing less. He watched it scurry away, over his hand. He watched it dash along the table and through the hands of those who wished to pin it down. He watched it leap off the end and disappear through an air vent. Go on my son! thought Archie."
White Teeth by Zadie Smith
"In your rocking-chair, by your window dreaming, shall you long, alone. In your rocking-chair, by your window, shall you dream such happiness as you may never feel."
Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
To finish:
"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
The Great Gatsby by F.Scott Fitzgerald
The end.
"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."
The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
"As I left China farther and farther behind, I looked out of the window and saw a great universe beyond the plane's silver wing. I took one more glance over my past life, then turned to the future. I was eager to embrace the world."
Wild Swans by Jung Chang
"And the ashes blew towards us with the salt wind from the sea."
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
''I never saw any of them again — except the cops. No way has yet been invented to say goodbye to them."
The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler
“Yes, she thought, laying down her brush in extreme fatigue, I have my vision.”
To the lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
"I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita."
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
"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, and 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'll 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 the 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."On the road by Jack Kerouac
"Archie, for one, watched the mouse. He watched it stand very still for a second with a smug look as if it exepcted nothing less. He watched it scurry away, over his hand. He watched it dash along the table and through the hands of those who wished to pin it down. He watched it leap off the end and disappear through an air vent. Go on my son! thought Archie."White Teeth by Zadie Smith
"In your rocking-chair, by your window dreaming, shall you long, alone. In your rocking-chair, by your window, shall you dream such happiness as you may never feel."Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
To finish:
The Great Gatsby by F.Scott Fitzgerald
The end.
