Famous last words -- mostly not!



The Alien Onions have recently published the last lines from 20 novels, of which I recognised four. Here's a sample of last lines from books I've loved. See how many you guess. I'll post the book titles in a week or so.

1.She would lower her eyes to avoid the dazzle, and walk on, breathing heavily, for it was a stiff pull up the hill, to the shed in which she continued to live.

2. Even more than when she was naked.

3. And I earnestly pray for this whole company, with a hope against hope, that all of us, who once were so united, and so happy in our union, may even now be brought at length, by the Power of the Divine Will, into One Fold and under One Shepherd.

4. But, in spite of these deficiencies, the wishes, the hopes, the confidence, the predilections of the small band of true friends who witnessed the ceremony, were fully answered in th perfect happiness of the union.

5. All I mean is that I left too much of me unfinished because I wasted too much time. However.

6. The rich and kindly earth of his adopted country absorbed his perishable body, as the country itself had never contrived to make its own, his wayward, vagrant spirit.

7. it was a mystery, but there was so much song wafting off the watery land, singing the country fresh as they walked hand in hand out of town, down the road, Westside, to home.

8. "It's dreadful to think that it will go on being repeated for ever, he -- and me! What's there to stop it?"

9. 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.

10. There didn't seem to be any alternative.

11. For some minutes, before she fell into a deep, dreamless sleep, she just lay quiet, smiling at the ceiling.

12. It is the dawn command of Auschwitz, a foreign word, feared and expected: get up, 'Wstawàch'.

13. But if Mary's story is to serve any purpose, it must help us to change that attitude; must help us to change the future -- for the sake of all our children.

14. Ann Shakespeare died in 1623, at the age of sixty-seven, the same year the first "folio" collection of her late husband's plays was published.

15. She called in her soul to come and see.

16. And the Island of Day in the Ocean of Dreams was fair as fair as fair.

17. It was the end of my watch, and I handed her over.

18. 'It is a supposedly "funny" magazine doing one of the most intelligent, honest, public-spirited jobs, a service to civilization, that has ever been rendered by any one publication.'

19. They hand in hand, with wand'ring steps and slow, / Through Eden took their solitary way.

20. Blessed Thomas, pray for us.

Back to work now,

Posted: Mon - February 23, 2009 at 03:01 PM           |

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