15 brilliant closing lines from books.

It's been said that the opening line sells a book whilst the closing line sells the author's next one. Here I've compiled the 10 most mesmerizing last lines from some of the best novels I've read.


1. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald    
"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

2. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
'A LAST NOTE FROM YOUR NARRATOR. I am haunted by humans."

3. Animal Farm by George Orwell
"The creatures outside 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."

4. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
"It's funny. Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody."

5. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
"I ran with the wind blowing in my face, and a smile as wide as the valley of Panjsher on my lips. I ran."

6. A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
"But this is how Paris was in the early days when we were very poor and very happy."

7. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
"This stone is entirely blank. The only thought in cutting it was of the essentials of the grave, and there was no other care than to make this stone long enough and narrow enough to cover a man. No name can be read there."

8. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
"I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can't stand it. I been there before."

9. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
"Yes, they will trample me underfoot, the numbers marching one two three, four hundred million five hundred six, reducing me to specks of voiceless dust, just as, in all good time, they will trample my son who is not my son, and his son who will not be his, and his who will not be his, until the thousand and first generation, until a thousand and one midnights have bestowed their terrible gifts and a thousand and one children have died, because it is the privilege and the curse of midnight’s children to be both masters and victims of their times, to forsake privacy and be sucked into the annihilating whirlpool of the multitudes, and to be unable to live or die in peace."

10. Sarah's Key byTatiana de Rosnay
"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."

11. The time traveler's wife by Audrey Niffenegger
''He is coming and here I am.''

12. The Witches by Roald Dahl
''It doesnt matter who you are or what you look like as long as somebody loves you.''

13. The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
''I'll say it was all worthwhile to know, just for a day, just for an hour, just for a minute, what it meant not to be a servant. I think I'm ready to have children Mr. Premier.''

14. Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger
''Alone, Frany lay quiet still, looking at the ceiling. Her lips began to move, forming soundless words, and they continued to move.''

15. Love in the time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
''And how long will we keep up with this Goddamn coming and going? He asked. Florentino Ariza had kept his answer ready for fifty three years, seven months and eleven days and night. 'Forever', he said.''

 If you liked these then check out some of the best opening lines here.

The 'Goddamn' world of J.D. Salinger.

American novelist, J.D. Salinger (1919-2010)

May it be Holden Caulfield from 'The catcher in the rye' or the members of the Glass family from 'Franny and Zooey', Salinger's characters share a disillusionment about the world they live in surrounded by 'phony' adults. Every character in Salinger's book is not your regular, conformist, loveable or (hate-able for that matter) character and they are often hard to relate too. You either love them or you don't. Period.

After being completely smitten by Salinger's controversial book 'The catcher in the rye', I was interested in exploring his other works. Franny and Zooey, a popular hit amongst this writer's fans proved to be a complex piece of work bearing the authors distinguished style of writing.

It's a hard read but at the end, its worth it. Its not a plot-driven novel, instead it is fueled by lengthy dialogues that sometime stretch to pages. In this novel, Salinger's gift of eloquent and real dialogues is exposed in all its brilliance. The dialogues are sharp, witty, honest and never boring. This is real writing in my opinion. Not a word more or a word less. 

While reading this book you get a feeling of being trapped in the freakish world of the Glass family where frustrations, contradictions and a sense of loss run high. You are absorbed into unusual settings where intense conversations take place between the main characters. Franny is the perfectly written first chapter in the book which introduces us to a pretty college student Franny Glass who is on the brink of an emotional and spiritual collapse.

"It's everybody, I mean. Everything everybody does is so--I don't know--not wrong, or even mean, or even stupid, necessarily. But just so tiny and meaningless--and sad-making. And the worst part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you're conforming just as much as everybody else, only in a different way."-Franny

However, the reasons for her world rejecting attitude and  breakdown are fully revealed in the second and last chapter of the book Zooey. Here, we see Franny's older brother, Zooey's morbidity and humor, his sense of being doomed by their elder brothers and enlightenment. 

"We're freaks, that's all. Those two bastards got us nice and early and made us into freaks with freakish standards, that's all. We're the tattooed lady, and we're never going to have a minute's peace, the rest of our lives, until everybody else is tattooed, too."-Zooey

I was gripped by Franny in the beginning only to see Zooey steal the spotlight and be captivated by his perspectives deeper into the book.

The book is perceived by some as a religious novel, however in the words of the narrator, this offering is '... a compound, a multiple, love story, pure and complicated.' This is J.D. Salinger at his best.