Word Pirates

I really enjoyed this list of 100 best last lines from novels–at least what I read of it so far. It reminded me how beautiful the English language can be. Here are a few that I liked:

You have fallen into art- return to life -William H. Gass, Willie Masters’ Lonesome Wife (1968)

The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed sombre under an overcast sky-seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness. -Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (1902)

And you say, “Just a moment, I’ve almost finished If on a winter’s night a traveler by Italo Calvino.” -Italo Calvino, If on a winter’s night a traveler (1979; trans. William Weaver)

If I were a younger man, I would write a history of human stupidity; and I would climb to the top of Mount McCabe and lie down on my back with my history for a pillow; and I would take from the ground some of the blue-white poison that makes statues of men; and I would make a statue of myself, lying on my back, grinning horribly, and thumbing my nose at You Know Who. -Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle (1963)

Yes, they will trample me underfoot, the numbers marching one two three, four hundred million five hundred six, reducing me to specks of voiceless dust, just as, in all good time, they will trample my son who is not my son, and his son who will not be his, and his who will not be his, until the thousand and first generation, until a thousand and one midnights have bestowed their terrible gifts and a thousand and one children have died, because it is the privilege and the curse of midnight’s children to be both masters and victims of their times, to forsake privacy and be sucked into the annihilating whirlpool of the multitudes, andto be unable to live or die in peace. -Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children (1981)

You?

~ Joy