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Last Lines Quotes

Browse 37 quotes about Last Lines.

Last Lines Quotes

“I have a habit, before leaving my flat in Prague, of checking three times to make sure I’ve shut off the gas stove, that I’ve turned off the lights in the bathroom and the water closet, and that I’ve locked the door, and then I go back once more to check on everything a fourth time, and so now, though I knew that nothing but my swan could possibly be lying there under the snow, I still brushed the snow away with trembling hands and saw the curve of her wing, and I went on brushing the snow away and yes, there was her neck, then I elbowed my way back like a sloth, and now nothing ached anymore but my heart, and so I crawled back from the riverbank to the swan again, and then again, trying to brush away more and more snow from that beautiful snowbound creature who, perhaps for my sake alone, had arranged herself in my sight so that I cried out into the dark morning and realized, bitterly, that the king of Czech comedians could go to claim his advance for this story, not to the Writers’ Publishing House, but to the very center, not of death, but of hell itself, where I will suffer pangs of guilt and remorse and shame that will pursue me into eternity, into the very heart of incalculable consequences.”

HeartbreakGuiltMadness And SanityLast LinesCzech Literature
Book:All My Cats
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“This was the last thing we needed. I was sure we made quite a pair, me in my evening gown and Milo in his bloodstained shirt. 'Let's hurry to the car, Milo.' I made a move to descend the front steps, ready to push my way through the crowd, but Milo stopped me with a hand on my arm. 'Just a moment, darling.' 'What is it?' 'Let's give them something to put in the gossip columns first, shall we?' And he pulled me to him and kissed me thoroughly in the blinding glare of the flashbulbs.”

RomanticKissCharmingEndingLast LinesAmory AmesAshley WeaverMilo AmesDeath Wears A MaskMilo And Amory
Book:Death Wears a Mask
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“Life is an adventure to be certain," Milo replied. "Especially if one has a nose for trouble. Isn't that right, my perceptive darling?" Sometimes one could have too much adventure. I was suddenly very weary of this holiday. It would be nice to get back to England, to rest at Thornecrest and enjoy our London flat. I was ready to go home. "Can we go back to London at once?" I asked Milo. "Very well, darling." He came to me and pulled me into his arms. "But let's not start packing just yet." I looked up at him smiling. "You don't mind us going home? I know how much you love your nights spent running wild in Paris." "Je n'aime que toi, ma chérie," he murmured, leaning to kiss me. Emile seemed to appreciate the sentiment for he screeched loudly, clapping his paws together with approval and smacking his lips. Milo glanced at the monkey with an annoyed sigh. "That will do, Emile. You've been most helpful, but I'm afraid I've had enough of your interference for one day." And then he swept me up into his arms and carried me to the bedroom, kicking the door firmly closed behind us.”

RomanceRomanticEndingDeclaration Of LoveHappy EndingLast LinesAmory AmesAshley WeaverMilo AmesThe Essence Of Malice
Book:The Essence of Malice
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“Tonight shall be the very beginning.' 'Was it?' 'It shall be. For me.' 'My beginning was the albatrosses.' 'That is a good beginning; I am glad it is yours. Tonight shall be mine.' 'Ought we to have different ones?' 'Different beginnings? I think we must.' 'Will there be more of them?' 'A great many more. Are your eyes closed?' 'Yes. Are yours?' 'Yes. Though it's so dark it hardly makes a difference.' 'I feel—more than myself.' 'I feel—as though a new chamber of my heart has opened.' 'Listen.' 'What is it?' 'The rain.”

HeartBeautifulLoversRomanticRainEndingLast LinesEleanor CattonThe LuminariesAstral Twins
Book:The Luminaries
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“Three creaks. She stepped three times. What is the meaning of it? Three creaks, three weeks? If she comes back for her shoes in three days, then I only need to empty them another three times. If it really is three weeks that were meant, what then. If three months, what then. Three years. That's why I had to write it down now. By then I may no longer believe I heard anything in Miri's room.”

WaitingHorrorSadHauntingEndingHelen OyeyemiLast LinesWhite Is For Witching
Book:White Is for Witching
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“I hope when this is done I'll be able to get back into my happy gardening vibe that was so healthy for me. I want to go back to my routine and my morning ritual with the compost, but it will probably be that my life will split in two. New Leaf Gardening in Wood Green will be happening in parallel to a fantasy that runs along the bottom of that screen like a ticker. Alice will be fine. Rabbit will stay up tonight, and every night. Resending and resending, reopening the page to see if she has responded, if anyone has. The spinning wheel will make my eyes hurt and everything else will go dark.”

WaitingTechnologySadComputerObsessedSympathyHauntingEndingOlivia SudjicLast LinesSplit
Book:Sympathy
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“We can ask and ask but we can't have again what once seemed ours forever—the way things looked, that church alone in the fields, a bed on a belfry floor, a remembered voice, the touch of a hand, a loved face. They've gone and you can only wait for the pain to pass. All this happened so long ago. And I never returned, never wrote, never met anyone who might have given me news of Oxgody. So, in memory, it stays as I left it, a sealed room furnished by the past, airless, still, ink long dry on a put-down pen. But this was something I knew nothing of as I closed the gate and set off across the meadow.”

GoneRegretSadMetaphorThe PastEndingLast LinesA Month In The CountryJ L CarrUnrecoverable
Book:A Month in the Country
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“Her face was wet with tears. A foreigner in the world of the emotions, ignorant of their language but compelled to listen to it, I turned into the street. With every step I marvelled more at the extent of Marian's self-deception. Why then was I moved by what she had said? Why did I half wish that I could see it all as she did? And why should I go on this preposterous errand? I hadn't promised to and I wasn't a child, to be ordered about. My car was standing by the public call-box; nothing easier than to ring up Ted's grandson and make my excuses. . . . But I didn't, and hardly had I turned in at the lodge gates, wondering how I should say what I had come to say, when the south-west prospect of the Hall, long hidden from my memory, sprang into view.”

SadEmotionsMemoryEndingLast LinesRepressed MemoryL P HartleyThe Go Between
Book:The go-between
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“And then I went back into my room, locked into a sequence as perfect as a pattern, and I sat down on my great rock throne, invisible to the outside world but palpable beneath me, and from how my face felt I thought maybe I was crying, either because I didn’t want to do this or because I did, it was hard to tell and anyway I never would, who would believe me in either case and who would be there to believe me in all cases, it was a puzzle, I had yet to learn the way of the jigsaw, and so I positioned the rifle beneath my chin, it feels cold, like an actual thing in the actual present physical world, OK, there it is, I am here now, and then I lay down on my belly and listened to the rising squall beyond the door.”

SadEndingSuicide AttemptLast LinesJohn DarnielleWolf In White Van
Book:Wolf in White Van
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“And as Sean climbs into bed and closes his eyes, Mother comes, riding astride a lion the size of a house, blowing a clarion from a horn made out of a hollowed-out elephant's tusk. Her eyes have a faint crimson glow from the lasers that are mounted behind her irises, ready to fire at will. 'I touched a prince's chest today and made his heart stop,' she says. 'I'll do it again if I have to: they'll see what happens if anyone gets in my way. Good night, my son. Remember that I will always keep you safe; that I am always everywhere and always here.' 'Good night, Mom,' Sean says, and falls asleep. And Mother recedes, wise and beautiful and strong, a genius and a hero, a punisher of thieves and a slayer of wicked men, to watch over her son in all her different versions.”

BeautifulMotherSadVersionsAfterlifeBittersweetEndingProtectorGuardian AngelMother And SonDexter PalmerVersion ControlLast Lines
Book:Version Control
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“Standing there small among the boxes of Kandy Kakes that rose like brownish cartoon cliffs around him, he resembled the videos I'd seen of sea lions floating angelically among the kelp, black bodies filmed from below, their shapes cut out in bright sunlight, bodies mistakable for those of a human being. I felt the memory of a shadowy arm around me, a watcher again, sitting there on the couch with my boyfriend, watching the animals become prey. Somewhere there were giant whales feeding on creatures too small to see, pressing them against fronds of baleen with a tongue the size of a sedan. There were polar bears killing seals, tearing ovoid chunks from out of their smooth, round bellies. In the surrounding vastness of the warehouse, I heard something scratching against the concrete floor and knew there were rats here, scraping a thin film of nutrient from the dry packaged matter that surrounded them. Life was everywhere, inescapable, imperative.”

LifeBeautifulNatureAnimalsEndingDescriptiveFood ChainLast LinesAlexandra KleemanThe Circle Of Life
Book:You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine
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“He had a talismanic obsession with final pages. At school he would near a book's conclusion, whether it was pulp science fiction or The Return of the Native, with one hand firmly clamped over the ultimate paragraph, in case his eye lit on a single word which might rob the entire story of its point, spoil the answer to the riddle of why he was reading it. When he shared this with Genevieve, she admitted to him that she always started a book by reading its final page, that she still did, but she wasn't sure why.”

ReadingBooksEndingReading HabitsRitualsLast LinesLast PageLuke KennardThe Transition
Book:The Transition
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