famous last words

These are some of my favorite endings to books (or stories) that I've come across. I'll add more when I think of them. Comment with your own!

"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter--tomorrow we will run faster, stretch our arms farther.... And one fine morning---

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

--F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

"I ended my first book with the words no answer. I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before your face questions die away. What other answer would suffice? Only words, words; to be led out to battle against other words. Long did I hate you, long did I fear you. I might--

--C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces

"And there are also many other things that Jesus did, which if they were written one by one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. Amen."

--The Apostle John, John 21:25

"A work of art? It has no invention; it has no order, system, sequence, or result; it has no lifelikeness, no thrill, no stir, no seeming of reality; its characters are confusedly drawn, and by their acts and words they prove that they are not the sort of people the author claims that they are; its humor is pathetic; its pathos is funny; its conversations are--oh! indescribable; its love-scenes odious; its English a crime against the language.

Counting these out, what is left is Art. I think we must all admit that."

--Mark Twain, Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences

"The vision comes and goes, mostly goes, but I live for it, for the moment when the mountains open and a new light roars in spate through the crack, and the mountains slam."

--Annie Dillard, Pilgrim At Tinker Creek

"Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger."

--James Joyce, Araby

"But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before."

--C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle

The Slacker revisits Screwtape

Well, I think it's obvious how much progress I am making on Les Miserables. Little to none, lately. I am still determined to finish it by the end of the summer, but I have been less and less motivated to finish, especially when I have to sludge through chapter after chapter of plot-interrupting material about Paris and Napoleon, cloisters and politics. Somehow I'm just not constructed to appreciate battle strategies and political gymnastics and such. Poor me. I have come up with a way to get through it, though--when I get fed up with excess information that breaks the plot, I switch to reading another book. Then I have another wack at it. Right now, I'm reading The Screwtape Letters again. I've been thinking lately about how easily my mind is distracted from God by countless things that I come up with to deceive myself, so it has been great reading this Lewis book and seeing new phrases and ideas register in my mind.

I'm also rediscovering the Psalms. Quality.

Here is some food for thought:

"Remember, he [the human being tempted] is not, like you [wormwood the demon], a pure spirit. Never having been a human (Oh that abominable advantage of the Enemy's!) you don't realise how enslaved they are to the pressure of the ordinary."

It's funny how little things like putting aside prayer or communion with God to fix lunch, take a nap, or make a grocery list can be used effectively against the human heart. Especially when you tell yourself that you'll carry on whatever thoughts about God later when you have more time, feel more awake, etc. It's cheated me out of a lot, for sure.