It is now time for the closing lines. Along with the opening line, the closing line also carries a lot of responsibility. Closing lines need to satisfy readers and finish with something powerful. Because, while the beginning of a book may get all the fame, the framed place on a wall, or are sometimes tattooed on various body parts, it’s the ending that really stays with you.
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
The Great Gatsby, F.Scott Fitzgerald
“In the meantime, she would just live.”
P.S. I Love You, Cecelia Ahern
“We sat there for a long time, till the crowd around us thinned, till the sun shifted and the light changed. Till we felt our eyes could meet again, without the tears.”
Sarah’s Key, Tatiana de Rosnay
“He was soon borne away by the waves and lost in darkness and distance.”
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
“She looked up and across the barn, and her lips came together and smiled mysteriously.”
The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
“I wish you all a long and happy life.”
The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold
“After all, tomorrow is another day.”
Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
“Whatever our struggles and triumphs, however we may suffer them, all too soon they bleed into a wash, just like watery ink on paper.”
Memoirs of a Geisha, Arthur Golden
“It’s funny. Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.”
The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
“There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.”
Origin of Species, Charles Darwin
“Oh, my girls, however long you may live, I never can wish you a greater happiness than this.”
Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
“In a place far away from anyone or anywhere, I drifted off for a moment.”
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakam
“But wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on the top of the Forest a little boy and his Bear will always be playing.”
The House At Pooh Corner, A.A. Milne
“He is coming, and I am here.”
The Time Traveler’s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger
