"But that is another tale, and as I said in the beginning, this is just a story meant to be read in bed in an old house on a rainy night. 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 Wonderful Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum, "A LAST NOTE FROM YOUR NARRATOR. After playing for a few moments, Andy hops in his car and drives away. TV, Film & Music. Its a monstrously selfish act borne of panic over his lost youth and the soul-crushing responsibilities of adult life. Here are 21 of our favorite last lines in literature: "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." From The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald ", "Max stepped into his private boat and waved goodbye and sailed back over a year and in and out of weeks and through a day and into the night of his very own room where he found his supper waiting for himand it was still hot. Advertisement. In the final pages, at the worst possible moment, he flees again, which Updike captures in that closing line swelling with deliverance and cowardice. But even more arresting is the books moral struggle to understand and forgive his parents failings and his own. It eats Quint (Robert Shaw), escapes an effort by Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) to spear it with poison, then attacks Brody, who is on a sinking boat. 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. The there was a knock on the door, I opened the door, and the new gerbil walked in. 1. Al takes Smails on in a high-stakes golfing grudge match with an assist from caddy Danny Noonan (Michael O'Keefe), whose cardinal sin is coming from a working-class family. ", "At that, as if it had been the signal he waited for, Newland Archer got up slowly and walked back alone to his hotel. A fitting conclusion to a book about globalization, and its power to rapidly change the world. Amen. ", "The men began singing, a grave, slow song that drifted away into the night. ". Now, of course, his story about a handsome gangster is considered one of the greatest novels of the 20th century. ", "I went on my way. This is the very famous last line of "Casablanca" which starred Humphrey Bogart, Paul Henreid and Ingrid Bergman. This writers personal favorite. The book ends with an epilogue that takes place at an academic conference in the year 2195. 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. Osgood announces his intention to marry Daphne, at which point Jerry rips off the wig and exposes himself as a man. "She was seventy-five and she was going to make some changes in her life. One of his associates leads him away from the scene of a standoff, offering the advice, "forget it, Jake. Here are 23 final lines that I have never forgotten. 19. ", The Pianist: The Extraordinary True Story of One Man's Survival in Warsaw, 1939-1945, Wladyslaw Szpilman, "This is not a full circle. ", Create and edit your own book list on Stylist here, "One bird said to Billy Pilgrim, 'Poo-tee-weet? His comment is a sick joke, which is perfectly in keeping with Fight Club's entire aesthetic. Toy Story 3 ends on a note that is both beautiful and sob-inducing. And like that he is gone. The tale of Max, the mischievous boy sent to bed without his supper, was Sendaks greatest achievement, the perfect pairing of text and image. The first sentence of a book may be what draws the reader in, but it is the closing sentence that makes many books memorable. He's a silent guardian. Best closing lines in movies 1. ", "My husband remained there some time after me to settle our affairs, and at first I had intended to go back to him, but at his desire I altered that resolution, and he is come over to England also, where we resolve to spend the remainder of our years in sincere penitence for the wicked lives we have lived. If On a Winters Night a Traveler , Italo Calvino. 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. I been there before. 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 as sensitive to onions as Tita, my great-aunt, who will go on living as long as there is someone who cooks her recipes. ", A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce, "'God's in his heaven, alls right with the world,' whispered Anne softly. 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. After escaping a Broadway theater, the titular ape grabs Fay Wray's Ann and climbs up the Empire State Building. Before moving to Washington, he edited the books section of the Christian Science Monitor in Boston. We held each other. The great thing about this final line is that it finds Tony Stark doing something few superheroes ever do, which publicly identifying himself. Orwells classic dystopian novel about a totalitarian state has never gone out of print, but it got a huge boost two years ago from the election of Donald Trump. Together, they attempt to assemble a "phone" that E.T. In prose of striking clarity, Rev. The Usual Suspects ends with a callback in which Verbal provides a very telling quote: "The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he did not exist. The Catcher in the Rye , J.D. ", "The scar had not pained Harry for nineteen years. Not so much a rollercoaster - a rollercoaster's too smooth - a yo-yo rather - a jerking, spinning toy in the hands of a maladroit child, more like, trying too hard, too impatiently eager to learn how to operate his new yo-yo. Ethereal and evocative, this line nicely wraps up Capote's deeply personal and heart-wrenching story. Wherein I lived, the greatest prince o' the world, The noblest; and do now not basely die, Not cowa. Elliott is visibly upset about having to part, so his intergalactic buddy lights up his finger, points it at the boy, and informs him "I'll be right here. 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. Henry wanted to become a mobster specifically so he wouldn't have to live life as an average Joe. In the final pages, the narrator knows some readers will continue to ignore the relevance of his life: Youll fail to see how any principle that applies to you could apply to me. But he knows thats not true. Advertisement Famous Last Lines in Movies Quiz. 2023 BuzzFeed, Inc. All rights reserved. All kinds of spot-on criticisms have been leveled against the novel (and producer David Selznicks 1939 movie) for its romanticized racism. A Dark Knight.". It's a last chance for a good first impression. 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. So it was that Giles Corey's last lines in "The Crucible" endure in popular culture. Although initially attacked for its fierce critique of unregulated capitalism, The Grapes of Wrath was a phenomenal bestseller and won a National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize. 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. His eyes, she sees, are open. As you probably guessed, the famous lines above open Shakespeare's comedy Twelfth Night. ", 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. O, let me cry. Dorothy, relieved to be away from all that drama, looks at her aunt and exclaims "Auntie Em, there's no place like home!". For the Olympic gymnast, success comes down to how well she sticks the landing. Like Fitzgerald's final lines, Cather's provide a poignant thesis statement. Hamlet's dying 'The rest is silence,' is the perfect end of anything. The 2008 Marvel movie Iron Man tells Tony Stark's origin story, showing how the billionaire playboy industrialist develops his trademark suit of armor and starts fighting crime. ", "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. 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. You are also agreeing to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Lapsing into the bland objectivity of academia, the professor warns his fellow scholars to be cautious about passing moral judgment upon the Gileadean. I carry a lot of scars. "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. Matter of fact, I think this the youngest us ever felt. It was Beauty killed the Beast.". ", 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. ", "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. OPTIONS: Show cue speeches Show full speeches # Act, Scene, Line (Click to see in context) Speech text: 1. ", "For all to be accomplished, for me to feel less lonely, all that remained to hope was that on the day of my execution there should be a huge crowd of spectators and that they should greet me with howls of execration. Image: Warner Brothers/Getty Images . He uncovers a corruption scandal within the Los Angeles Department of Power and Water. ", "I lingered round them, under that benign sky; 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. Alices Adventures in Wonderland , Lewis Carroll. The 1933 version of King Kong is an all-time classic thanks in no small part to its dramatic ending. ", "With the Gardiners, they were always on the most intimate terms. The last line of DFW's first novel hints at what else he had in store. 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. "In a place far away from anyone or anywhere, I drifted off for a moment. "The cults of the famous and the dead" is such a punchy last line, it could just as well serve as the book's subtitle. Salinger. 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. Without missing a beat, Osgood retorts, "well, nobody's perfect.". The scene takes place before the Battle of Agincourt in Northern France, specifically on October 25th, 1415 (a day known as Saint Crispin's Day). Some last lines have the power to disrupt the course of an entire story, shaking up our expectations. They win, much to the judge's dismay. If you do, you start missing everybody. First Line: "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.". LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT by Eugene O'Neill [1956]. Salinger (1951). ", "It's funny. Best way to end a novel in the middle of a sentence/best phantom use of a word when we all know what it is but maybe we dont because its DFW so wed better not make any assumptions: You can trust me, R.V. Batman knows that, if the citizens of crime-ridden Gotham learn of Dent's killing spree under his guise of Two-Face, all hope will go out the window. "Tomorrow, Ill think of some way to get him back. During its initial release in 1999, Fight Club was widely misunderstood. Interesting cinematography and engaging introductory scenes are vital to reel viewers into a film, but a final line is perhaps even more important. Over the course of the movie, he sees evidence that the world can be a pretty horrible place. What was the last line? A Tale of Two Cities , Charles Dickens. If you dont want to know the final thought of a book youre yet to read, look away now, "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. Harvey Dent, thought by many to be a hero, is dead. A watchful protector. The quoted lines occur in a voiceover as people enter and exit a hotel's revolving door. Wake up to the day's most important news. Shakespeare's plays and sonnets are some of the most quoted in all of literature. Filmmaker Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong) corrects the officer, saying "no, it wasn't the airplanes. "From The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. She responds by shooting him. But, eventually, he's caught in a pinch by the Feds. He would be there all night, and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning. , eventually, he sees evidence that the world can be a hero is. Initial release in 1999, Fight Club was widely misunderstood identifying himself classic thanks in no small to! 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