I swear I did not see this article on 20 Classic Closing Lines from Literature when I posted Best Ending Lines. Who knows, maybe they stole my idea? 🙂 Anyway, what’s interesting about this article is that Mr. Shakespeare *does* appear on the list for a change. Before looking, anybody want to guess? Because you’ll never guess. I never would have. I still don’t understand why they picked the one they did. (True story, I read The Old Man and the Sea when I was in second grade. I was in the hospital for a period of time, and a well-meaning aunt knew I liked to read. So she brought me some books. One of them happened to be Hemingway. <shrug> Not claiming I understood it, just that I read it. Guy goes fishing, and it takes him so long and out so far to get the actual fish that by the time he gets home all the other fish have eaten it, right? Something like that. ;))
I couldn't guess, and if I'd known a dozen ending lines by heart I wouldn't have guessed (I went ahead and looked at the site). One of the 20 best "closing" lines was really the wonderful opening of the Inferno.
That certainly is an odd collection. Of course, he has limited himself to closing lines. I still think Othello wins for Shakespeare. Tale of Two Cities has it for literature.
–Carl
Much as I like that Will made the list, I don't get the Much Ado inclusion at all.
Their first choice strikes me as bland, but I like most of the rest.
I'd dump Old Man and American Psycho, and replace one of them with Dickens' original ending to Great Expectations: " I was very glad afterwards to have had the interview; for in her face and in her voice, and in her touch, she gave me the assurance that suffering had been stronger than Miss Havisham's teaching, and had given her a heart to understand what my heart used to be."
And I'd put Romeo and Juliet's final speech (six lines, but one sentence) in rather than Much Ado's.