书摘:100 Best Last Lines from Novels(2)

100 Best Last Lines from Novels(2) Source: American Book Review 26. The knife came down, missing him by inches, and he took off. –Joseph Heller, Catch-22 (1961) 27. Is it possible for anyone in Germany, nowadays, to raise his right hand, for whatever the reason, and not be flooded by the memory of a dream to end all dreams? –Walter Abish, How German Is It? (1980) 28. Lastly, she pictured to herself how this same little sister of hers would, in the after-time, be herself a grown woman; and how she would keep, through all her riper years, the simple and loving heart of her childhood; and how she would gather about her other little children, and make their eyes bright and eager with many a strange tale, perhaps even with the dream of Wonderland of long ago; and how she would feel with all their simple sorrows, and find a pleasure in all their simple joys, remembering her own child-life, and the happy summer days. –Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) 29. But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs. –George Eliot, Middlemarch (1871–72) 30. He was soon borne away by the waves and lost in darkness and distance. –Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818) 31. Now everybody— –Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow (1973) 32. But, in spite of these deficiencies, the wishes, the hopes, the confidence, the predictions of the small band of true friends who witnessed the ceremony, were fully answered in the perfect happiness of the union. –Jane Austen, Emma (1816) 33. It was the nightmare of real things, the fallen wonder of the world. –Don DeLillo, The Names (1982) 34. He knew what those jubilant crowds did not know but could have learned from books: that the plague bacillus never dies or disappears for good; that it can lie dormant for years and years in furniture and linen-chests; that it bides its time in bedrooms, cellars, trunks, and bookshelves; and that perhaps the day would come when, for the bane and the enlightening of men, it would rouse up its rats again and send them forth to die in a happy city. –Albert Camus, The Plague (1947; trans. Stuart Gilbert) 35. This is not the scene I dreamed of. Like much else nowadays I leave it feeling stupid, like a man who lost his way long ago but presses on along a road that may lead nowhere. –J. M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians (1980) 36. “Like a dog!” he said, it was as if the shame of it must outlive him. –Franz Kafka, The Trial (1925; trans. Willa and Edwin Muir) 37. P.S. Sorry I forgot to give you the mayonnaise. –Richard Brautigan, Trout Fishing in America (1967) 38. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate. –Albert Camus, The Stranger (1942; trans. Matthew Ward) 39. 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. –Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children (1981) 40. Oedipa settled back, to await the crying of lot 49. –Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49 (1965) 41. I lingered round them, under that benign sky; watched the moths fluttering among the heath, and hare-bells; 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 Brontë, Wuthering Heights (1847) 42. A way a lone a last a loved a long the –James Joyce, Finnegans Wake (1939) 43. Columbus too thought he was a flop, probably, when they sent him back in chains. Which didn’t prove there was no America. –Saul Bellow, The Adventures of Augie March (1953) 44. Everything we need that is not food or love is here in the tabloid racks. The tales of the supernatural and extraterrestrial. The miracle vitamins, the cures for cancer, the remedies for obesity. The cults of the famous and the dead. –Don DeLillo, White Noise (1985) 45. Are there any questions? –Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale (1986) 46. It was a fine cry—loud and long—but it had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow. –Toni Morrison, Sula (1973) 47. And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One! –Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol (1843) 48. “No glot…C’lom Fliday” –William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch (1959) 49. 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. –George Orwell, Animal Farm (1945) 50. “Poor Grendel’s had an accident,” I whisper. “So may you all.” –John Gardner, Grendel (1971)

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• Leap Day Babie: Quadrennial Birthdays -祤湫霖- ♀ (3438 bytes) () 02/28/2012 postreply 08:49:52

• Nice~ Thanks for sharing! -~叶子~- ♀ (0 bytes) () 02/28/2012 postreply 20:55:10

• My pleasure. Have a nice day. -祤湫霖- ♀ (0 bytes) () 02/29/2012 postreply 06:41:02