While I was busy a couple of months ago some people went to their novel shelves and played the favorite-opening-and-closing-sentence game. I confess that the only truly memorable opening sentence that comes to my mind is an old sub-runner-up from the Bulwer-Lytton contest:

I was an extremely, extremely, extremely sensitive child.

Granted, the game's cultural moment has passed, and yet I still want to play.

And yet I'm too lazy to get up and go to my shelf.

So I made up some favorite closing lines instead.

1. And perhaps we shall never know, dear reader, how Judge Armister finally chose between nausea and his heart's content when in that autumnal night he heard his beloved Charlotte whisper gently into his ear: "There's always time for cantaloupe, my love. Always time for cantaloupe."

2. "None of that matters, Flak," Starter said soberly, "because you're a cyborg!"--while Josiah interrupted him to say, "No, Starter, you're a cyborg!" and Mary Dean stuttered, "No, Josiah, you're a cyborg," after which Josiah looked at Mary Dean and Mary Dean looked at Starter and Flak looked blankly at Josiah and all three said together, "Now wait a minute."

3. "Here's your narrative closure, asshole," Perky Peterman sneered, briskly pushing the wheelbarrow toward the end of the pier, all the while intently watching Earl Mandible's drooling face as it registered his approaching watery doom with a final, idiotic leer:
     "Wheeeeeeeeeee!"

posted by Turbulent Velvet on 07/02/2002