# Last sentences that blow you away. **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 5, 2007, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-sentences-that-blow-you-away/398805 "2007-04-05T01:11:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![phungi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/phungi/32/395_2.png) [@phungi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/phungi)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2007, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-sentences-that-blow-you-away/398805/41 "2007-04-05T13:09:08Z")
_“I lingered round them, under that benign sky: watched the moths fluttering among the heath and harebells, listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass, and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.”_ -Emily Bronte, _Wuthering Heights_ ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2007, 1:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-sentences-that-blow-you-away/398805/42 "2007-04-05T13:14:29Z")
Isaac Asimov’s _The Last Question_ He said “Let there be Light” and there was light. ---
**Author:** ![si\_blakely](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d9b06d/32.png) [@si\_blakely](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/si_blakely)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2007, 1:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-sentences-that-blow-you-away/398805/43 "2007-04-05T13:16:01Z")
_“please if you get a chanse put some flowrs on Algernons grave in the bak yard…”_ Flowers for Algernon - Daniel Keyes Si ---
**Author:** ![Skammer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skammer/32/143_2.png) [@Skammer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skammer)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2007, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-sentences-that-blow-you-away/398805/44 "2007-04-05T13:24:02Z")
“And I walked back to the hotel in the rain.” – Ernest Hemingway, _A Farewell to Arms_ ---
**Author:** ![EddyTeddyFreddy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eddyteddyfreddy/32/18796_2.png) [@EddyTeddyFreddy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EddyTeddyFreddy)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2007, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-sentences-that-blow-you-away/398805/45 "2007-04-05T13:50:48Z")
[QUOTE=si\_blakely] _“please if you get a chanse put some flowrs on Algernons grave in the bak yard…”_ Flowers for Algernon - Daniel Keyes Si [/QUOTE] Hoo, yeh, that’s another one that really got to me. ---
**Author:** ![Scubaqueen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c0e974/32.png) [@Scubaqueen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scubaqueen)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2007, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-sentences-that-blow-you-away/398805/46 "2007-04-05T13:55:04Z")
"When I saw her out there in the hallway I knew she was no mulatto. And those distorted features still reflect a family likeness. I’ve seen her portrait, and I can’t be mistaken. There lies the creature that was once Celia Blassenville." _Pigeons from Hell_ - Robert E. Howard ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2007, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-sentences-that-blow-you-away/398805/47 "2007-04-05T14:00:31Z")
“When I speak of poor Norrys they accuse me of this hideous thing, but they must know that I did not do it. They must know it was the rats; the slithering scurrying rats whose scampering will never let me sleep; the daemon rats that race behind the padding in this room and beckon me down to greater horrors than I have ever known; the rats they can never hear; the rats, the rats in the walls.” – H.P. Lovecraft “It’s a cookbook!” – Damon Knight ---
**Author:** ![Bridget\_Burke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7cd45c/32.png) [@Bridget\_Burke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bridget_Burke)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2007, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-sentences-that-blow-you-away/398805/48 "2007-04-05T14:21:13Z")
Sorry, I’ll have to post a whole paragraph. > [@](#): > > A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead. [James Joyce’s “The Dead”](http://mockingbird.creighton.edu/english/micsun/IrishResources/dead.htm) ---
**Author:** ![Quercus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/7ab992/32.png) [@Quercus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quercus)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2007, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-sentences-that-blow-you-away/398805/49 "2007-04-05T14:37:14Z")
Senor **Catfish** got it right. Nitpickily, it’s _All Quiet on the Western Front_ (title and last words.) And read the book before the final sentence, or it ruins it. ---
**Author:** ![Dung\_Beetle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dung_beetle/32/7945_2.png) [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2007, 2:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-sentences-that-blow-you-away/398805/50 "2007-04-05T14:43:15Z")
Final two sentences of The Haunting of Hill House: Hill House itself, not sane, stood against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, its walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2007, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-sentences-that-blow-you-away/398805/51 "2007-04-05T14:47:14Z")
“The creatures looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.” --Animal Farm ---
**Author:** ![eleanorigby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ee7513/32.png) [@eleanorigby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eleanorigby)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2007, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-sentences-that-blow-you-away/398805/52 "2007-04-05T14:48:44Z")
[QUOTE=Morbo] “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” [/QUOTE] You beat me to Fitzgerald’s Gatsby. Love that line. ---
**Author:** ![Rebecca\_DiMwitter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/a87d85/32.png) [@Rebecca\_DiMwitter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rebecca_DiMwitter)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2007, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-sentences-that-blow-you-away/398805/53 "2007-04-05T14:49:50Z")
“ **…and whatever walks there, walks alone.** ” A reprise of the first paragraph of the book, **The Haunting of Hill House** , by Shirley Jackson. As Stephen King says and I paraphrase, if the blighted place wasn’t haunted in the beginning, it most certainly is by the end. God, I love that book. Scariest, subtlest “fast read” in existence, IMHO. ---
**Author:** ![Dung\_Beetle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dung_beetle/32/7945_2.png) [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2007, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-sentences-that-blow-you-away/398805/54 "2007-04-05T14:53:55Z")
Beat you by 3 posts, **Rebecca**. I love that book too, and I knew I was going to after reading only the first paragraph. ---
**Author:** ![Alistair\_McCello](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/58956e/32.png) [@Alistair\_McCello](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alistair_McCello)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2007, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-sentences-that-blow-you-away/398805/55 "2007-04-05T15:04:32Z")
> [@Fyodor Dostoevsky](#): > > “And always so, all our lives hand in hand! Hurrah for Karamazov!” Kolya cried once more rapturously, and once more the boys took up his exclamation: > > ``` > "Hurrah for Karamazov!" > > ``` The last lines from **The Brothers Karamazov** , always been one of my favorite books and the last line has stuck in my memory since I first read the book six years ago. The lines come after an impassioned speech by Alyosha Karamazov at the funeral of a young boy who was a representation of the authors own son who had died at the age of three while he was writting the book. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2007, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-sentences-that-blow-you-away/398805/56 "2007-04-05T15:27:22Z")
[QUOTE=betenoir] We do. But I wish he were still writing. His sanity would come in handy about now. [/QUOTE] Seconded. ☹ The last paragraph of Heinlein’s classic short story “The Man Who Traveled in Elephants” will make your eyes blurry, unless you’re a Vulcan. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2007, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-sentences-that-blow-you-away/398805/57 "2007-04-05T15:33:15Z")
[QUOTE=RealityChuck] “When I speak of poor Norrys they accuse me of this hideous thing, but they must know that I did not do it. They must know it was the rats; the slithering scurrying rats whose scampering will never let me sleep; the daemon rats that race behind the padding in this room and beckon me down to greater horrors than I have ever known; the rats they can never hear; the rats, the rats in the walls.” – H.P. Lovecraft [/QUOTE] HPL **loved** his last lines! So much so that it lends itself to parody. I have a book in storage, _Shaggy B.E.M. Stories,_ which is an anthology of parody SF. It includes a chapter on “M.M. Moamrath,” an HPL parody described as “SF’s answer to P.D.Q. Bach.” From “The Commonplace Book of M.M. Moamrath,” which is a collection of nothing but last lines around which Moamrath intended to construct a story: "No, Krautmord, I will be unable to attend this year’s Wurstfest. You see, _I have been dead for three years!"_ "And the last thing I saw as the horror stood over me was the horror . . . _standing over me!"_ “'Ho ho, he he, my name is _P’inkhi-li!’_ the thing gibbered.” "And there on the floor was nothing but a pair of boots, and sticking out of them – _the protruding tibias of Elmo Freebish!"_ ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2007, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-sentences-that-blow-you-away/398805/58 "2007-04-05T15:55:32Z")
Since **Peter Morris** beat me to “The Last Question”, I’ll submit a different Asimov: [spoiler]Statis was punctured and the room was empty from “The Ugly Little Boy”[/spoiler] ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2007, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-sentences-that-blow-you-away/398805/59 "2007-04-05T15:58:41Z")
I know the OP didn’t mention movies, but can anything top “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship”? ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2007, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-sentences-that-blow-you-away/398805/60 "2007-04-05T16:04:27Z")
[QUOTE=Annie-Xmas] I know the OP didn’t mention movies, but can anything top “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship”? [/QUOTE] Sure. “Oh, no. It wasn’t the airplanes. 'Twas beauty killed the beast.” And, even better: Kitty: I was reading a book the other day. Carlotta: Reading a book? Kitty: Yes. It’s all about civilization or something. A nutty kind of a book. Do you know that the guy says that machinery is going to take the place of every profession? Carlotta: Oh, my dear, that’s something you need never worry about. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-sentences-that-blow-you-away/398805.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-sentences-that-blow-you-away/398805.md?page=4)