Favorite Last Line in a Book

[Hodor Frey]

Though my personal favorite is the last couple of pages of Lunar Park, I can't find my copy. Another favorite that I can't believe no one has posted yet:

"Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.

I am haunted by waters."

Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It

[Toby Frost]

1984 as well for me, but Brave New World has a really creepy last few lines. Oh, and Animal Farm.

Also most of Raymond Chandler's novels have great endings. I particularly like the end of The Lady in the Lake: "Something that had been a man." It's both sinister and quite sad.

[RedEyedGhost]

Maybe it's just because I just finished it, and it's a fucking awesome book, but I thought the last line (non-epilogue) of Replay by Ken Grimwood was perfect.

The possibilities, Jeff knew, were endless.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Hodor,

The end of "A River Runs Through It" is very moving. Good choice.

[Lelouch Lamperouge]

Picker began to turn back to her companions—when the man began speaking. 'Very well, permit

me, if you will, on this night. To break your hearts once more. This is the story of the Chain of Dogs.

Of Coltaine of the Crow Clan, newly come Fist to the 7th Army…' - Memories Of Ice, Steven Erikson.

[Melonica Stormborn]

The previously posted ones are all good. I'll like 'em all if I could. Instead I will just add:

From The Catcher in the Rye:

Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.

[Richard]

McCarthy's almost invariably good for endings - No Country for Old Men, The Road, Blood Meridian, All The Pretty Horses and The Crossing all have stunning concluding paragraphs, but they're all lengthy - none really qualifies as a last line.

Le Guin's The Dispossessed is very strong: "But he had not brought anything. His hands were empty, as they always had been."

Also Jay McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City: "You will have to go slowly. You will have to learn everything all over again." Weirdly sober and deeply felt wrap for a jokey, materialist romp. (The ending to his Brightness Falls is very strong too, but again, it's a whole long paragraph of mounting power)

Pete Dexter's Brotherly Love: "And in the moment he hits the ground in the back yard, he sees himself in perfect focus; he sees he is forgiven."

Seth Morgan's Homeboy has a great last line about hanging a baseball cap on the rearview mirror, dropping the car into drive and not looking back, but I've lent the book out and can't remember it word for word.

Last but not least, a pulpy old favourite of mine that combines style with technical brilliance. From the novella A Plague of Masters by Poul Anderson: "Then faintly across ten kilometres he heard the crash and saw the flare of guns." The point here is that this gun battle is the final confirming action in the planned victory of the hero, and said hero isn't involved, isn't even there to see it happen. But the mere distant sound and glimmer of it confirms that the story is done.

[Darth Richard]

"And then Buffy staked Edward, The End"

[Yarp]

The entire last paragraph of Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian:

Perfect ending to one of the most disturbing books I've ever read.

Ditto to the love for the last lines of The Great Gatsby and 1984.

I guess I was so excited to write Blood Meridian that I didn't notice your post. I still think I copied it much prettier, if only because I didn't mention the Great Gatsby in the same sentence. Addition by subtraction there.

[The Marquis de Leech]

In the twilight of autumn it sailed out of Mithlond, until the seas of the Bent World fell away beneath it, and the winds of the round sky troubled it no more, and borne upon the high airs above the mists of the world it passed into the Ancient West, and an end was come for the Eldar of story and of song.

[The Killer Snark]

"Gholas. He's welcome to them."

Chapterhouse Dune

[ᴛɪᴍᴏᴛʜʏ]

Not in the spirit of the thread, but--and this is contingent on the absence of any got'cha in the next book--the last line in The Daylight War was immensely satisfying. Also frustrating, as an ending point.

It almost makes up for the author's earnest attempt to ruin Leesha over the last couple books and the overdone hillbilly speak in this one.

[Nearly Headless Ned]

Winter's Bone;

"Wheels"

So wonderfully optimistic in context.

+2

[TempusFugit]

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

[Kindly Old Man]

Not a book per se, but from the Lottery -

"It isn't fair, it isn't right," Mrs. Hutchinson screamed. and then they were upon her.

[banjax451]

"O God - please give him back! I shall keep asking You."

last line of A Prayer for Owen Meany - always been a favorite of mine

[3CityApache]

Koniec i bomba

Kto przeczytal, ten traba.

Witold Gombrowicz - Ferdydurke

And I'm just wondering how on hell was it translated to any other language.

[King Tyrion VIII]

Best ending to any book: 1984.

"Everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother."

Now, I may not like the ending, but it is one hell of a finish and I have yet to read a book with a more powerful end.

Winner. That whole book is epic. But the final scene is the best ending I've ever read.

[naz]

Not exactly a book ending, but this:

"Then at last when the mallorn leaves were falling, but spring had not yet come, she laid herself to rest upon Cerin Amroth; and there is her green grave, until the world is changed and all the days of her life are utterly forgotten by men that come after, and elanor and niphredil bloom no more East of the Sea. Here ends this tale, as it as come to us from the South; and with the passing of Evenstar no more is said in this book of the days of old."

(Although, technically, you could interpret it as the actual end of the Red Book of Westmarch.)