26 Final Lines That Changed Everything
When authors know exactly how to leave us
Author Viet Nguyen is retiring his teaching career at USC next year, where he’s been teaching English/Lit since 1997.
“The last class I teach is Spring 2026, “ he wrote his friends on Facebook. “It will be a small senior seminar, the kind I've rarely had the opportunity to teach. It will be, fittingly, about The End— endings and closures in narratives, and endings in individual life, society, the world. If you have suggestions for reading . . .”
Boy, do I ever!
I’m a fiend for a graceful, transporting, literary ending. The last page. Final words. It’s more like songwriting than fiction. The rhythm has to be Goldilocks, right? Every beat counts.
A brilliant end must take you back to the beginning, it throws you into the naked future, it is the epitome of “BE HERE NOW.”
© Honey Lee Cottrell.
A great ending has the ability to stand alone, complete in itself, without the reader knowing what came before.
AND, a masterful ending is only possible when the rest of the book is a masterpiece.
Tough act.
Unforgettable endings take time to become known. I might read a short story today, and admire its last words. But I need to give it time, come back to it, listen to what other readers are saying.
Is it haunting us?
I could tell the story of my life by reciting book ends that blew my young mind. I was shocked as a kid to discover every storybook didn’t end on a happy note. I remember my frustration one year, running to my mom, saying, “But what does this ending mean! It’s not clear.”
And her saying, “It’s on purpose.”
The first time I read a book that ended in mid-sentence, I was hiking in the Sierras with a bunch of pack burros and I yelled loud enough to send them running.
Some book ends make you cry. Others set you into a fugue state; you can’t operate heavy machinery. Some give you “merry hell” as Dash Hammett did in Red Harvest.
I’m sending my suggestions to Viet, but I thought in the meantime, you might like to play a game.
I’ve listed an Alphabet’s worth of mesmerizing endings, below. See if you can match them with the author and the book! They’re not tricky, but it’s fun to discover a few that you may not have enjoyed yet. I’ll look forward to hearing yours.