Following on from the question about incipits, what are some last lines of novels that you love?

Me, me, me. I’ll start:

“So we beat on, boats against the current, born back ceaselessly into the past.” The Great Gatsby

“But wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on the top of the Forest a little boy and his Bear will always be playing.” The House at Pooh Corner

Many excellent possibilities. Explicits tend to stand out more than incipits. I’ll name two of my favorites. The first from yet another novel I read in 8th grade (and the first time an explicit really stuck with me):

Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes:

True, Rab had died. Hundreds would die, but not the thing they died for. ‘A man can stand up.’

And maybe one of the greatest (and most discussed) of all time:

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison:

And it is this which frightens me: Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?

@Demosthenes Those are two excellent ones!

“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known,” Sydney Carton, A Tale of Two Cities

” And I have by me, for my comfort, two strange white flowers – shrivelled now, and brown and flat and brittle – to witness that even when mind and strength had gone, gratitude and a mutual tenderness still lived on in the heart of man.”

“The Time Machine” by H G Wells

‘He loved Big Brother.’ 1984. George Orwell

“Now vee may perhaps to begin. Yes?”
Portnoy’s Complaint, Philip Roth

For all to be accomplished, for me to feel less lonely, all that remained to hope was that on the day of my execution there should be a huge crowd of spectators and that they should greet me with howls of execration.
The Stranger, Albert Camus

“There were three thousand six hundred and fifty three days like that in his stretch. From the first clang of the rail to the last clang of the rail. Three thousand six hundred and fifty-three days. The three extra days were for leap years.”

-One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,. Alexander Solzhenitsyn