# Perfect last lines.
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfect-last-lines/465531
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [September 28, 2008, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfect-last-lines/465531 "2008-09-28T02:46:08Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 5
### Author:  [@Spectralist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectralist)
#### Post date: [October 1, 2008, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfect-last-lines/465531/81 "2008-10-01T23:45:11Z")
Madness… madness.
Bridge on the River Kwai
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### Author:  [@Ignatz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ignatz)
#### Post date: [October 2, 2008, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfect-last-lines/465531/82 "2008-10-02T02:05:48Z")
Watching the credits roll right now on Fox Movie Channel (DirecTV 258) on one of the most intense flicks I have ever seen, even on the 4th viewing, **The Edge.** with Sir Anthony Hopkins, Alec Baldwin, Harold Perrineau, Elle Macpherson, and Bart the Bear; Dir. Lee Tamahori, 1997, 117 minutes.
“They died saving my life.”
It’s on again at midnite, if you can break away from the marathon rerun of Breaking Bad on AMC. (I’m dvding that one, ads and all, again.
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### Author:  [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)
#### Post date: [October 2, 2008, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfect-last-lines/465531/83 "2008-10-02T02:11:48Z")
“Of course, and you’re Dorothy Harris, and I’m Forrest Gump.”
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### Author:  [@cmyk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmyk)
#### Post date: [October 2, 2008, 5:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfect-last-lines/465531/84 "2008-10-02T05:07:33Z")
Oh, god, one of the best King last lines:
**"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed."**
♫ _Last verse, same as the first!_ ♫
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### Author:  [@cmyk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmyk)
#### Post date: [October 2, 2008, 5:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfect-last-lines/465531/85 "2008-10-02T05:15:00Z")
**Jaws:**
Brody: What day is this?
Hooper: It’s Wednesday… eh, it’s Tuesday, I think.
Brody: Think the tide’s with us?
Hooper: Keep kicking.
Brody: I used to hate the water…
Hooper: I can’t imagine why.
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### Author:  [@SuperNelson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SuperNelson)
#### Post date: [October 2, 2008, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfect-last-lines/465531/86 "2008-10-02T12:52:50Z")
“I’m still here, you bastards!”
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### Author:  [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)
#### Post date: [October 2, 2008, 1:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfect-last-lines/465531/87 "2008-10-02T13:15:20Z")
I didn’t see the whole movie, just the last 30 seconds… a woman is holding a gun on the guy who’s been stalking her the entire movie. She picks up the phone.
“Hello, police? Could you send a car to my house? I’ve just shot an intruder.”
Hangs up the phone. Looks at the guy.
Fade to black.
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### Author:  [@BaneSidhe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BaneSidhe)
#### Post date: [October 2, 2008, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfect-last-lines/465531/88 "2008-10-02T13:18:16Z")
> [@Ethilrist](#):
>
> I didn’t see the whole movie, just the last 30 seconds… a woman is holding a gun on the guy who’s been stalking her the entire movie. She picks up the phone.
>
> “Hello, police? Could you send a car to my house? I’ve just shot an intruder.”
>
> Hangs up the phone. Looks at the guy.
>
> Fade to black.
That’s “Sleeping With The Enemy” with Julia Roberts.
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### Author:  [@Rebo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rebo)
#### Post date: [October 2, 2008, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfect-last-lines/465531/89 "2008-10-02T13:28:39Z")
> [@Ethilrist](#):
>
> I didn’t see the whole movie, just the last 30 seconds… a woman is holding a gun on the guy who’s been stalking her the entire movie. She picks up the phone.
>
> “Hello, police? Could you send a car to my house? I’ve just shot an intruder.”
>
> Hangs up the phone. Looks at the guy.
>
> Fade to black.
No! She shoots him after she hangs up! It’s her abusive husband who’s tracked her down.
_Sleeping With the Enemy_ with Julia Roberts.
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### Author:  [@olpeculiar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/olpeculiar)
#### Post date: [October 2, 2008, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfect-last-lines/465531/90 "2008-10-02T16:15:47Z")
“Be careful out there among them English.”
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### Author:  [@Arglefraster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arglefraster)
#### Post date: [October 7, 2008, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfect-last-lines/465531/91 "2008-10-07T18:42:41Z")
“And if you want to imagine the future, imagine a boot … no, imagine a sneaker, laces trailing, kicking a pebble; imagine a stick, to poke at interesting things, and throw for a dog that may or may not decide to retrieve it; imagine a tuneless whistle, pounding some luckless popular song into senslesness; imagine a figure, half-angel, half-devel, all human … slouching hopefully towards Tadfield … forever.”
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### Author:  [@WormTheRed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WormTheRed)
#### Post date: [October 7, 2008, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfect-last-lines/465531/92 "2008-10-07T19:19:48Z")
> [@Skara\_Brae](#):
>
> _“Home. I’ll go home. And I’ll think of some way to get him back. After all… tomorrow is another day.”_
I totally agree with this one! Just a great movie.
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### Author:  [@Scupper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scupper)
#### Post date: [October 7, 2008, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfect-last-lines/465531/93 "2008-10-07T19:41:51Z")
_A glooming peace this morning with it brings;
The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head:
Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things;
Some shall be pardon’d, and some punished:
For never was a story of more woe
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo._
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### Author:  [@Scupper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scupper)
#### Post date: [October 7, 2008, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfect-last-lines/465531/94 "2008-10-07T19:44:58Z")
“Hey, Harmonica - when they do you in, pray it’s somebody who knows **where** to shoot… Go away… go away… go away, I don’t want you to see me die.”
“I think we’ll be OK here, Leon.”
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### Author:  [@UncleRojelio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncleRojelio)
#### Post date: [October 7, 2008, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfect-last-lines/465531/95 "2008-10-07T20:06:34Z")
Just for [reference](http://www.filmsite.org/greatlastlines.html).
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### Author:  [@prodicus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/prodicus)
#### Post date: [October 7, 2008, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfect-last-lines/465531/96 "2008-10-07T20:24:19Z")
A last paragraph instead of a last line, but one that has haunted me since I first read it:
“Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.”
From _The Road_
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### Author:  [@drm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drm)
#### Post date: [October 7, 2008, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfect-last-lines/465531/97 "2008-10-07T20:33:06Z")
> [@](#):
>
> …And in the dream I knew that he was goin’ on ahead and he was fixin’ to make a fire somewhere out there in all that dark and all that cold, and I knew that whenever I got there he would be there. And then I woke up.
_No Country for Old Men_
So this is my favorite movie, sue me.
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### Author:  [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)
#### Post date: [October 7, 2008, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfect-last-lines/465531/98 "2008-10-07T20:41:12Z")
“It glowed in the depths of space like a searing beacon—beautiful and defiant, yet somehow forlorn and lost—a glorious diadem marking the trackless graves of the men and women of TFNS _Defender_ who had died to save an Earth not even their own. It grew and expanded as they watched, and then, as suddenly as it had appeared, it was gone, snuffed by the breath of eternity, and Richard Aston felt his wife sob against his shoulder, weeping for her dead at last.” - _The Apocalypse Troll_
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### Author:  [@well\_he\_s\_back](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/well_he_s_back)
#### Post date: [October 7, 2008, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfect-last-lines/465531/99 "2008-10-07T20:50:51Z")
I’ve already posted my favorite from a movie (someone graciously let me have it rather than quote it himself), but I can’t recall if this, my favorite last lines from a book, has been mentioned:
"Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of those rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.
I am haunted by waters. "
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### Author:  [@eleanorigby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eleanorigby)
#### Post date: [October 7, 2008, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/perfect-last-lines/465531/100 "2008-10-07T23:31:50Z")
> [@Eonwe](#):
>
> Oh, and another:
>
> _So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past._
Thank you.
“Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.”
Don’t remember if it’s the last line, but it should be! (never mind, found last line from **Skara\_Brae** )
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