Best Book Endings

I received my September copy of Australian Author www.asauthors.org yesterday and there was a fun article from the Observer newspaper in England, where, in the opinion of Robert McCrumm they published a list of the ten greatest closing lines in books.

What is your favourite book ending?

For me it would have to be Scarlett O’Hara’s final words. I have to admit to saying the words, I’ll think about it tomorrow!

First edition cover released 1936

My choice:

Gone with the Wind
(Margaret Mitchell)
“”I’ll think about it all to-morrow, at Tara. I can stand it then. To-morrow, I’ll think of some way to get him back. After all, to-morrow is another day.”

Here are a few of them from the Observer’s  list:

The Great Gatsby
(F. Scott Fitzgerald)
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

First edition (book 1) cover released 1871

Middlemarch
(George Eliot)
“But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependant on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and the rest in unvisited tombs.”

Catch 22
(Joseph Heller)
“The knife came down, missing him by inches, and he took off.”

To the Lighthuse
(Virgina Wolf)
“Yes, she thought, laying down her brush in extreme fatigue, I have had my vision.”

 First edition cover was not printed until December 1847 under the pseudonym Ellis Bell.

Wuthering Heights
(Emily Bronte)
“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.”