# It was a dark & stormy night: Favourite beginnings & endings



## Nesacat (Jul 5, 2006)

It was a dark and stormy night ... All of us have, at one time or another heard about a tale beginning with those words. Beginnings are important. They pull us into a tale and many a reader's interest has been lost by a dull beginning. Endings are the same. The bring some form of closure, create a sense of mystique and possibility perhaps. But a bad ending can ruin a good book.

We all of us have beginnings and/or endings we are particularly fond of and I'm curious to see what some of them are and know why you care for them.

I'll start with a long-time favourite beginning. 

*The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson*
No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.

I've liked this paragraph from the first time I read it years ago in high school. This house standing alone with it's doors and floors doing exactly what they are meant to do. But things are not as they seem. The house stands alone, without dreams, silent and yet somehow alive, watching and waiting and walking and knowing it's time would come. The words are quiet yet give the house a sinister personality and make the house a character in it's own right in the tale.


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## j d worthington (Jul 5, 2006)

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." -- "The Call of Cthulhu," by H. P. Lovecraft.

Note that HPL is not deploring knowledge, but humanity's inability to handle an accurate knowledge of the nature of the universe and reality. With this paragraph, he turns the universe into the biggest haunted house of all, because it is an empty place that mocks us by mirroring our own delusions about our importance therein.


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## Paige Turner (Jul 5, 2006)

There was a white horse, on a quiet winter morning when the snow covered the streets gently and was not deep, and the sky was swept with vibrant stars, except in the east, where dawn was beginning in a light blue flood. The air was motionless, but would soon start to move as the sun came up and the winds from Canada came charging down the Hudson.

From A Winter's Tale by Mark Halprin. The best _first chapter _ I've ever read, though not, in the end, the best book.


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## Silent Speaker (Jul 5, 2006)

"_The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed._
_The desert was the apotheosis of all deserts, huge, standing to the sky for what looked like eternity in all directions. It was white and blinding and waterless and without feature save for the faint, cloudy haze of the mountains which sketched themselves on the horizon and the devil-grass which brought sweet dreams, nightmares, death. An occasional tombstone sign pointed the way, for once the drifted track which cut its way through the thick crust of alkali had been a highway. Coaches and buckas had followed it. The world had moved on since then. The world had emptied."_
-The Gunslinger, S. King.

Though perhaps not seeming quite as eloquent as when it was first read, this, I would say, is one of my favourite beginnings. Perhaps my liking of it is due only to the situation/condition I was in at the time of reading; the memories of the first time that I read it. 
I was sick, a cold, I think. In my ears was the lulling drone of the hot and stuffy bus (van) I was in and an agonising rhythm pounded in my skull as the bus travelled down a rather featureless road with naught but dried up grass on the edges. But through the haze, the disorienting thoughts sickness had induced and the overall _hell_ that I was feeling, I managed read a little . 

The passage struck me with strange clarity (considering my state): I was _in_ that desert, following the man in black, whoever he was, for god knows whatever reason_. _I either fell asleep or passed out soon after and crazy, dali-esque dreams followed (dali-esque scares me  ). So you see, I like it because by reading the words I can evoke that scene in the bus, the feeling of wandering through that bleak desolation of a "_world that had moved on/a world that had emptied"._ Reading it makes me feel thirsty every time . (praise the gods for fridges  )

Although, _why_ I would want to experience it all again is an excellent question 

Edit: 
Oh god! Is it possible to mortally injure oneself whilst simply drinking water? Cause I think I just did. Oh the pain! Curse you, King! You caused this! *_shakes fist at the sky before issuing watery death gurgle._


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## Foxbat (Jul 9, 2006)

Not Science Fiction or Fantasy...not even a favourite book of mine...but I do like the ending

Rick is a hundred yards away across the river, flittling from tree to tree like playing Indians. I shall have an audience for my ritual. Now he is leaning against a tree and peering at me through some instrument or other. How the devil did Rick L. Tucker manage to get hold of a gu

From _The Paper Men_ by William Golding.

It's a fine way to end a first-person account in a tragic and yet believable way.


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## Prefx (Jul 9, 2006)

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times [...]


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## Nesacat (Jul 10, 2006)

The beginning and end of Ray Bradbury's short story *The Fog Horn*

*The beginning...*
Out there in the cold water, far from land, we waited every night for the coming of the fog, and it came, and we oiled the brass machinery and lit the fog light up in the stone tower.  Feeling like two birds in the grey sky, McDunn and I sent the light touching out, red, then white, then red again, to eye the lonely ships.  And if they did not see our light, then there was always our Voice, the great deep cry of our Fog Horn shuddering through the rags of mist to startle the gulls away like decks of scattered cards and make the waves turn high and foam.


*The end ...*
 The monster? 
 It never came back. 
 "It's gone away," said McDunn.  "It's gone back to the Deeps.  It's learned you can't love anything too much in this world.  It's gone into the deepest Deeps to wait another million years.  Ah, the poor thing!  Waiting out there, and waiting out there, while man comes and goes on this pitiful little planet.  Waiting and waiting. 
 I sat in my car, listening.  I couldn't see the lighthouse or the light standing out in Lonesome Bay.  I could only hear the Horn, the Horn, the Horn.  It sounded like the monster calling. 
 I sat there wishing there was something I could say.


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## Tau Zero (Jul 10, 2006)

Space is infinite.
It is dark.
Space is neutral.
It is cold.

The first 4 sentences of The Black Corridor by Michael Moorcock.  The book ends with:

The spacecraft moves through the silence of the cosmos.  It moves so slowly as to seem not to move at all.  It is a lonely little object.

Space is infinite.
It is dark.
Space is neutral.
It is cold.


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## Nesacat (Jul 10, 2006)

*Tau Zero* ... this book is definitely moving up on my to-read pile. I have a great fondness for books that begin and end with the same words. Thank you for this one.


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## Tau Zero (Jul 10, 2006)

Nesacat said:
			
		

> *Tau Zero* ... this book is definitely moving up on my to-read pile. I have a great fondness for books that begin and end with the same words. Thank you for this one.


 
I hope you like it.  It's more a psychological thriller than anything else.  A study of someone loosing their mind.  If you go to this thread:

http://www.chronicles-network.com/forum/10751-my-favorite-cover-is.html

You can see the cover of my edition.


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## j d worthington (Jul 10, 2006)

Nesacat said:
			
		

> *Tau Zero* ... this book is definitely moving up on my to-read pile. I have a great fondness for books that begin and end with the same words. Thank you for this one.


Nesa: I highly second this. This remains one of my favorite of Moorcock's books. He wrote it in conjunction with his (then) wife, Hillary Bailey, and it is a very, very interesting book. The opening lines were also used by Hawkwind in their Space Ritual show in the '70s -- you can find it on disc, recently remastered, and used to much the same effect, to lead into a song that they'd written which chimes in perfectly with the themes of the book, I'd say...

And, of course, HPL frequently used this technique in his stories, the earliest example being "Polaris", which has always been one of my favorites for sheer mood and structure; I also find the brief verse in there very evocative....


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## Brys (Jul 10, 2006)

Titus Groan has a brilliant beginning:


> Gormenghast, that is, the main massing of the original stone, taken by itself would have displayed a certain ponderous architectural quality were it possible to have ignored the circumfusion of those mean dwellings that swarmed like an epidemic around its outer walls. They sprawled over the sloping earth, each one half way over its neighbour until, held back by the castle ramparts, the innermost of these hovels laid hold on the great walls, clamping themselves thereto like limpets to a rock. These dwellings, by ancient law, were granted this chill intimacy with the stronghold that loomed above them. Over their irregular roofs would fall throughout the seasons, the shadows of time-eaten buttresses of broken and lofty turrets, and, most enormous of all, the shadow of the Tower of Flints. This tower, patched unevenly with black ivy, arose like a mutilated finger from among the fists of knuckled masonry and pointed blasphemously at heaven. At night, the owls made of it an echoing throat; by day it stood voiceless and cast its long shadow.


 
And the ending:


> Through honeycombs of stone would now be wandering hte passions in their clay. There would be tears and there would be strange laughter. Fierce births and deaths beneath umbrageous ceilings. And dreams, and violence,a and disenchantment.
> And there shall be a flame-green daybreak soon. And love itself will cry for insurrection! For tomorrow is also a day - and Titus has entered his stronghold


 
Flowers for Algernon has a great beginning and ending as well:


> progris riport 1 martch 3
> 
> Dr Strauss says I should rite down what I think and remembir and evrey thing that happins to me  from now on. I dont no why but he says its importint so they will see if they can use me. I hope they use me becaus Miss Kinnian says mabye they can make me smart. I want to be smart. My name is Charlie Gordon I werk in Donners bakery where Mr Donner gives me 11 dollers a week and bred or cake if I want. I am 32 yeres old and next munth is my brithday. I tolld dr Strauss and perfesser Nemur I cant rite good but he says it dont matter he says I shud rite just like I talk and like I rite compushishens in Miss Kinnians class at the beekmin collidge center for retarted adults where I go to lern 3 times a week on my time off. Dr. Strauss says to rite a lot evrything I thin and evrything that happins to me but I cant think anymor because I have nothing to rite so I will close for today...yrs truly Charlie Gordon


 
The ending:


> Anyway I bet Im the frist dumb persen in the world who found out some thing importent for sience. I did somthing but I dont remembir what. So I gess its like I did it for all the dumb pepul like me in Warren and all over the world. Goodby Miss Kinnian and dr Strauss and evrybody...


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## Nesacat (Jul 10, 2006)

*The Strange High House in the Mist - HP Lovecraft. *

This is one of those tales where the beginning and the end are made of almost the same words.

*The beginning:*
In the morning,            mist comes up from the sea by the cliffs beyond Kingsport. White and            feathery it comes from the deep to its brothers the clouds, full of            dreams of dank pastures and caves of leviathan. And later, in still            summer rains on the steep roofs of poets, the clouds scatter bits of            those dreams, that men shall not live without rumor of old strange secrets,            and wonders that planets tell planets alone in the night. When tales            fly thick in the grottoes of tritons, and conchs in seaweed cities blow            wild tunes learned from the Elder Ones, then great eager mists flock            to heaven laden with lore, and oceanward eyes on tile rocks see only            a mystic whiteness, as if the cliff's rim were the rim of all earth,            and the solemn bells of buoys tolled free in the aether of faery.

*The end:*
All these things,            however, the Elder Ones only may decide; and meanwhile the morning mist            still comes up by that lovely vertiginous peak with the steep ancient            house, that gray, low-eaved house where none is seen but where evening            brings furtive lights while the north wind tells of strange revels.            white and feathery it comes from the deep to its brothers the clouds,            full of dreams of dank pastures and caves of leviathan. And when tales            fly thick in the grottoes of tritons, and conchs in seaweed cities blow            wild tunes learned from the Elder Ones, then great eager vapors flock            to heaven laden with lore; and Kingsport, nestling uneasy in its lesser            cliffs below that awesome hanging sentinel of rock, sees oceanward only            a mystic whiteness, as if the cliff's rim were the rim of all earth,            and the solemn bells of the buoys tolled free in the aether of faery.


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## j d worthington (Jul 11, 2006)

Here's one where the beginning is quite nice, but the ending.... Well, see for yourself:

The beginning:

I knew she was a virgin because she was able to ruffle the silken mane of my unicorn. Named Lizette, she was a Grecian temple in which no sacrifice had ever been made. Vestal virgin of New Orleans, found walking without shadow in the thankgod coolness of cockroach-crawling Louisiana night. My unicorn whinnied, inclined his head, and she stroked the ivory spiral of his horn.

And the ending:

We faded and were lifted invisibly on the scented breath of that good God who had owned us, and were taken away from there. To be born again as one spirit, in some other human form, man or woman we did not know which. Nor would we remember. Nor did it matter.

This time, love would not destroy us. This time out, we would have luck.

The luck of silken mane and rainbow colors and platinum hoofs and spiral horn.

"On the Downhill Side", by Harlan Ellison


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## Tau Zero (Jul 11, 2006)

Here's the great final sentence by Lovecraft's Dreamquest of Unknown Kadath:

And vast infinities away, past the Gate of Deeper Slumber and the enchanted wood and the garden lands and the Cerenarian Sea and the twilight reaches of Inquanok, the crawling chaos Nyarlathotep strode brooding into the onyx castle atop unknown Kadath in the cold waste, and taunted insolently the mild gods of earth whom he had snatched abruptly from their scented revels in the marvellous sunset city.

Now THAT is what i call an ending!


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## j d worthington (Jul 11, 2006)

And a personal favorite, as well. *Dream-Quest* is such a sadly underrated story ... but finding more and more of an audience as time goes on, thank goodness!


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## Nesacat (Jul 11, 2006)

Aye Tau Zero that is a lovely ending indeed. Echoes in the mind long after the book has been closed and put away.

I'll echo j.d. in being glad that the tale is increasingly being appreciated along with the rest of H.P.L's work. 

Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtagn! .... sorry ... got a little carried away there.


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## j d worthington (Jul 11, 2006)

Ia! Ia! Shub-niggurath! The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young! (Can you imagine the cleaning bill for _all those_ diapers?)


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## Saeltari (Jul 11, 2006)

The end.


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## j d worthington (Jul 12, 2006)

Saeltari said:
			
		

> The end.


I'm assuming the beginning was "I AM BORN"?


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## j d worthington (Jul 12, 2006)

Another from Harlan Ellison, "All the Sounds of Fear":

Beginning:

"Give me some light!"

Cry: tormented, half-moan half-chant, cast out against a whispering darkness: a man wound in white, arms upflung to roistering shadows, sooty sockets where eyes had been, pleading, demanding, anger and hopelessness, anguish from the soul into the world. He stumbled, a step, two, faltering, weak, the man returned to the child, truying to find some exit from the washing sea of darkness in which he trembled.

"Give me some light!"

Around him a Greek chorus of sussurating voices. Plucking at his garments he staggered toward an intimation of sound, a resting place, a goal. The man in pain, the figure of _all _pain, all desperation, and nowhere in that circle of painful light was there release from his torment. Sandaled feet stepping, each one above an abyss, no hope and no safety; what can it mean to be so eternally blind?

Again, "Give me some light!"

The last tortured ripping of the words from a throat raw with the hopelessness of salvation. Then the man sank, to the shadows that moved in on him. The fact half-hidden in chiaroscuro, sharp black, blanched white, down and down into the grayness about his feet, the circle of blazing-white light pin-pointing him, a creature impaled on a shard of brilliance, till closing, closing, closing it swallowed him, all gone to black, darkness within and without, black even deeper, nothing, finis, end; silence.

Richard Becker, Oedipus, had played his first role. Twenty-four years later, he would play it again, as his last. But before that final performance's curtain could be rung, twenty-four years of greatness would have to strut across stages of life and theater and emotion.

Time, passing.


The end:

While inside Room 16, lying up against the far wall, his back against the soft passive padding, Richard Becker looked out at the door, at the corridor, at the world, forever.

Looked out as he had come, purely and simply.

Without a face. From his hairline to his chin, a blank, empty, featureless expanse. Empty. Silent. Devoid of sight or smell or sound. Blank and faceless, a creature God had never deigned to bless with a mirror to the world. His Method was now gone.

Richard Becker, actor, had played his last part, and had gone away, taking with him Richard Becker, a man who had known all the sounds, all the sights, all the life of fear."


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## Saeltari (Jul 13, 2006)

j. d. worthington said:
			
		

> I'm assuming the beginning was "I AM BORN"?


 non, non, non. "In the beginning..."


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## Saeltari (Jul 13, 2006)

"That's all folks!"


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## j d worthington (Jul 13, 2006)

Saeltari said:
			
		

> "That's all folks!"


Beginning: "Be vewy, vewy qwiet. I'm out hunting for wabbits."

Yes?


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## StarShipSofa (Jul 13, 2006)

you could just sat - The END!


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## j d worthington (Jul 13, 2006)

StarShipSofa said:
			
		

> you could just sat - The END!


Hmmm. I think it's been used before. Can't remember where though....


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## Nesacat (Jul 15, 2006)

These come from Alice Hoffman's Ice Queen, which I'd read recently. It's a retelling of sorts of the fairy tale of the Snow Queen and it weaves in many other old fairy tales. It's one of the most lyrical, flowing books I've read. The words run like a river from page to page and you hardly notice the hours passing. 

*Beginning:*
Be careful hat you wish for. I know that for a fact. Wishes re Brutal, unforgiving things. They burn your tongue the moment they're spoken and you can never take them back. They bruise and bake and come back to haunt you. I've made far too many wishes in my lifetime, the first when I was eight years old. Not the sort of wish for ice cream or a party dress or long blonde hair; no. The other sort, the kind that rattles your bones, then sits in the back of your throat, a greedy red toad that chokes you until you say it aloud. The kind that could change your life in an instant, before you have time to wish you could take it back.

*The end:*
This is what I know, the one and only thing. The best way to die is while you're living, even here in New Jersey. Even for someone like me. You'd laugh to know how long it's taken me to figure that out, when all I had to do was cross over the mountains. When I walk to my car in the parking lot on winter nights, I have often noticed bats, a black cloud in the darkening sky. They bring me comfort. They make me feel you're not so far away. To think, I used to be afraid. I used to run and hide. Now I stand and look upward. I don't mind what the weather is; the cold has never bothered me. I know what I'm seeing is the ever after. I hope it's you.


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## j d worthington (Jul 15, 2006)

Oh, indeed, that is lovely. Definitely going to have to put that on my TBRS list ... very soon indeed. You're right. The flow there is very nice, and quiet yet poignant.


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## stirdgit (Jul 16, 2006)

I have two favorites:

_A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct._ 
Dune - Frank Herbert

I am a sick man . . . I am a wicked man. An unattractive man. I think my liver hurts.
Notes From Underground - Fyodor Dostoevsky


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## carrie221 (Jul 17, 2006)

Nesacat that is beautiful that is definitly going on my to read list right away.

My favorite ending from a book is The 10th Kingdom by Kathryn Wesley:

_She leaned her head against his shoulder. Happily Ever After wasn't a prediction. She had learned in her journey through the Nine Kingdoms that Happily Ever After was really something else._

_If she lived every day with all her heart, then she would be Happily Ever After. She stared at the park around her. Wolf was warm against her and so solid. Wolves mated for life. And most of the time, so did humans. She placed a hand over her belly, and her ring sang softly._

_This was truly a magical place. She just hadn't realized how magical until now._


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## j d worthington (Jul 17, 2006)

That, too, is a lovely ending.

One of my own favorites is from Lord Dunsany's "The Hoard of the Gibbelins", in his A Dreamer's Tales:

"The Gibbelins eat, as is well known, nothing less good than man. Their evil tower is joined to Terra Cognita, to the lands we know, by a bridge. Their hoard is beyond reason; avarice has no use for it; they have a separate cellar for emeralds and a seperate cellar for sapphires; they have filled a hole with gold and dig it up when they need it. And the only use that is known for their ridiculous wealth is to attract to their larder a continual supply of food. In times of famine they have been known to scatter rubies about, a little trail of them to some city of Man, and sure enough their larders would soon be full again."

and the ending?

"He was in the emerald cellar. There was no light in the lefty vault above him, but, diving through twenty feet of water, he felt the floor all rough with emeralds, and open coffers full of them. By a faint ray of the moon he saw that the water was green with them, and, easily filling a satchel, he rose again to the surface; and there were the Gibbelins waist-deep in the water, with torches in their hands! And, without saying a word, _or even smiling_, they neatly hanged him on the outer wall -- and the tale is one of those that have not a happy ending."


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## Nesacat (Jul 17, 2006)

I just finished Justin Marozzi's Tamerlane. I've always been fascinated by the man, even by his name. And this book is particularly well-written. A sweeping, historical saga and puuls the reader right into the world of the Tamerlane and the city of Samarkhand.
*
Beginning:*
At around 10 o'clock on the morning of 28 July 1402, from a patch of raised ground high above the valley, the elderly emperor surveyed his army. It was a vast body of men, spreading over Chibukabad plain, north-east of Ankara, like a dark and terrible stain. Through the glinting sunlight the ordered lines of mounted archers stretched before him until they were lost in the shimmering blaze, each man waiting for the signal to join battle. There were two hundred thousand professional soldiers drawn from the farthest reaches of his empire, from Armenia to Afhganistan, Samarkhand to Siberia. Their confidence was high, their discipline forged in the fire of many battles. They had never known defeat.

*Ending:*
Temur's burial place was a simple slab of carved stone engraved with Koranic inscriptions. After the pomp and colour of  the mausoleum above, the drab, dark chamber was a sombre sight. This was the grave of the man who had blazed across Asia like a comet across the heavens. For a few years his descendants had watched over the glowing embers falling through the sky until the Temurid empire and dynasty had crashed to earth, extinguished altogether. In  the West Temur has been  but forgotten. Those who know his name perhaps remember the fire and brimstone of Marlowe's play bout a tyrant who styled himself 'the Scourge and Wrath of God/The only fear and terror of the world.' But to all but a few, the greatest Islamic empire-builder in history, the man who joined Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan in the trio of the world's greatest conquerors, remains little more than that: a name. The city he had built so brilliantly and decorated so lovingly, once the envy of the world, lies in a neglected southern outpost of the old Soviet empire.


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## Rosemary (Jul 17, 2006)

'I see that child who lay upon her bosom and who bore my name, a man, winning his way up in that path of life which once was mine.  I see him winning it so well, that my name is made illustrious there by the light of his.  I see the blots I threw upon it faded away.  I see him, foremost of just judges and honoured men, bringing a boy of my name, with a forehead that I know and golden hair, to this place - then fair to look upon, with not a trace of this day's disfigurement - and I hear him tell the child my story, with a tender and faltering voice.
"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."

Charles Dickens - A Tale Of Two Cities.  

I have always found the ending of this story somehow inspiring.


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## j d worthington (Jul 18, 2006)

Yet another Dunsany, from "The Highwayman", in The Sword of Welleran:

"Tom o' the Roads had ridden his last ride, and was now alone in the night. From where he was, a man might see the white recumbent sheep and the black outline of the lonely down, and the grey line of the farther and lonelier downs beyond them; or in hollows far below him, out of the pitiless wind, he might see the grey smoke of hamlets arising from black valleys. But all alike was black to the eyes of Tom, and all the sounds were silence in his ears; only his soul struggled to slip from the iron chains and to pass southwards into Paradise. And the wind blew and blew.

"For Tom to-night had nought but the wind to ride; they had taken his true black horse on the day when the took from him the green fields and the sky, men's voices and the laughter of women, and had left him alone with chains about his neck to swing in the wind for ever. And the wind blew and blew.

"But the soul of Tom o' the Roads was nipped by the cruel chains, and whenever it struggled to escape it was beaten backwards in the iron collar by teh wind that blows from Paradise from the south. And swinging there by the neck, there fell away old sneers from off his lips, and scoffs that he had long since scoffed at God fell from his tonue, and there rotted old bad deeds that were evil; and they all fell to the ground and grew there in pallid rings and clusters. And when these ill things had all fallen away, Tom's soul was clean again, as his early love had found it, a long while since in spring; and it swung up there in the wind with the bones of Tom, and with his old torn coat and rusty chains.

"And the wind blew and blew."

the ending:

"... Then these three, that had robbed the Law of its due and proper victim, still sinned on for what was still their friend, and levered out the marble slabs from the sacred sepulchre of Paul, Archbishop of Alois and Vayence. And from it they took the very bones of the Archbishop himself, and carrid them away to the eager grave that they had left, and put them in and shovelled back the earth. But all that lay on the ladder they placed, with a few tears, within the great white sepulchre under the Cross of Christ, and put back the marble slabs.

"Thence the soul of Tom, arising hallowed out of sacred ground, went at dawn down the valley, and, lingering a little about his mother's cottage and old haunts of childhood, passed on and came to the wide lands beyond the clustered homesteads. There, there met with it all the kindly thoughts that the soul of Tom had ever had, and they flew and sang beside it all the way southwards, until at last, with singing all about it, it came to Paradise.

"But Will and Joe and the gypsy Puglioni went back to their gin, and robbed and cheated again in the tavern of foul repute, and knew not that in their sinful lives they had sinned one sin at which the Angels smiled."


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## j d worthington (Jul 18, 2006)

And another from Lovecraft, "The Quest of Iranon":

"Into the granite city of Teloth wandered the youth, vine-crowned, his yellow hair glistening with myrrh and his purple robe torn with briers of the mountain Sidrak that lies across the antique bridge of stone. The men of Teloth are dark and stern, and dwell in square houses, and with frowns they asked the stranger whence he had come and what were his name and fortune. So the youth answered:

"'I am Iranon, and come from Aira, a far city that I recall only dimly but seek to find again. I am a singer of songs that I learned in th far city, and my calling is to make beauty with the things remembered of childhood. My wealth is in little memories and dreams, and in hopes that I sing in gardens when the moon is tender and the west wind stirs the lotos-buds.'"

the ending:

"And in the twilight, as the stars came out one by one and the moon cast on the marsh a radiance like that which a child sees quivering on the floor as he is rocked to sleep at evening, there walked into the lethal quicksands a very old man in tattered purple, crowned with withered vine-leaves and gazing ahead as if upon the golden domes of a fair city where dreams are understood. That night something of youth and beauty died in the elder world."


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## Nesacat (Jul 18, 2006)

Rosemary said:
			
		

> 'I see that child who lay upon her bosom and who bore my name, a man, winning his way up in that path of life which once was mine.  I see him winning it so well, that my name is made illustrious there by the light of his.  I see the blots I threw upon it faded away.  I see him, foremost of just judges and honoured men, bringing a boy of my name, with a forehead that I know and golden hair, to this place - then fair to look upon, with not a trace of this day's disfigurement - and I hear him tell the child my story, with a tender and faltering voice.
> "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."
> 
> Charles Dickens - A Tale Of Two Cities.
> ...



That is a lovely piece of prose Rosie ... thank you for reminding me. It is very hopeful indeed.


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## Nesacat (Jul 18, 2006)

j. d. worthington said:
			
		

> That, too, is a lovely ending.
> 
> One of my own favorites is from Lord Dunsany's "The Hoard of the Gibbelins", in his A Dreamer's Tales:
> 
> and the ending?



 Goodness I loved this one ... the whole time I was reading I was trying to tell the guy not to be so stupid and to just leave ... now. He didn't listen.


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## YOSSARIAN (Jul 21, 2006)

This beginning may be out of place here. The passage is not from a book or a short story. It is the first passage of the Declaration of Independence.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."

Which leads to the best ending paragraph of any book:

"He gazed up at the enormous face.  Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark mustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding.  O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast!  Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose.  But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished.  He had victory over himself.  He loved Big Brother.


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## j d worthington (Jul 21, 2006)

I think the thread was intended to have beginnings and endings from the same piece in the same post, but what the heck. These are both wonderful choices. And, yes, that ending, first time I read that book, gave me nightmares for weeks....


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## Nesacat (Jul 23, 2006)

Ummm ... I think I shall go with being flexible and allowing beginnings and endings from different books since we often find ourselves liking the one bur not necessarily the other. 

Indeed Yossarian that is a very good beginning and an awfuly scary ending in comparison. The book truly frightened me when I first read it and it still does.


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## steve12553 (Jul 23, 2006)

Mine is not quite Science Fiction or Fantasy but it is close on both counts.
"Call me Ishmael. Some years ago-never mind how long precisely- having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore,I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world."

And ending with:"It was the devious cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing children, found only another orphan."

The preface to the epilogue is a quote from Job "And I only am escaped alone to tell thee"
 If memory serves this was paraphrased by Ray Bradbury in his screenplay to the 1956 movie, "And I alone escaped to tell the tale"

For the youthful group not yet exposed this is of course Hermen Melville's _Moby Dick Or the White Whale_.

Add that to _the Gunslinger_, _Dune_, _the Foghorn_, and _the Haunting of Hill House_, you've got some of my favorite beginnings and endings


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## j d worthington (Jul 23, 2006)

Steve -- WONDERFUL CHOICE! Good to see somone quoting Melville. Also, have you ever heard Bradbury tell about his experiences when Huston was trying to get him to do the screenplay for *Moby Dick*? It's quite interesting....


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## steve12553 (Jul 23, 2006)

j. d. worthington said:
			
		

> Steve -- WONDERFUL CHOICE! Good to see somone quoting Melville. Also, have you ever heard Bradbury tell about his experiences when Huston was trying to get him to do the screenplay for *Moby Dick*? It's quite interesting....


 I have a vague memory of that and I don't remember where I read it.


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## j d worthington (Jul 23, 2006)

steve12553 said:
			
		

> I have a vague memory of that and I don't remember where I read it.


Actually, I heard him tell the story on the Tomorrow show with Tom Snyder several years ago, but I think it may be in one of his collections, as well... I'll see if I can't track it down; if I do, I'll let you know where to find it.


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## YOSSARIAN (Jul 23, 2006)

j. d. worthington said:
			
		

> Actually, I heard him tell the story on the Tomorrow show with Tom Snyder several years ago, but I think it may be in one of his collections, as well... I'll see if I can't track it down; if I do, I'll let you know where to find it.


 
I'm not sure but I think Bradbury tells this stort in "Zen and the Art of Writing".


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## j d worthington (Jul 23, 2006)

YOSSARIAN said:
			
		

> I'm not sure but I think Bradbury tells this stort in "Zen and the Art of Writing".


Thanks! I'll try to dig out my copy, and see. Appreciate the help on this.


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## littlemissattitude (Jul 23, 2006)

j. d. worthington said:
			
		

> Steve -- WONDERFUL CHOICE! Good to see somone quoting Melville. Also, have you ever heard Bradbury tell about his experiences when Huston was trying to get him to do the screenplay for *Moby Dick*? It's quite interesting....



Oh, yes.  That was one of the things Bradbury discussed when I saw him speak at LosCon a few years ago.  Very intereting.


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## Nesacat (Sep 6, 2006)

This comes from Necronomicon: The Wanderings Of Alhazred by Donald Tyson.

*The beginning:*
You who would learn the wisdom of hidden things and traverse the avenues of shadow beneath the stars, heed this song of pain that was chanted by one who went unseen before you that you may follow the singing of his voice across the windblown sands that obscure the marks of his feet. Each who goes into the Empty Space walks alone, but where one has gone another may follow.

Turn not your mind from night fears, but embrace them as a lover. Let terror possess your body and course through your veins with its heady intoxication to steal your judgment, your very reason. In the madness of the night, all sounds become articulate. A man sure of himself, confident in his strength, aware of his rightful place, remains forever ignorant. His mind is closed. He cannot learn in life, and after death there is no acquisition of knowledge, only unending certainty. His highest fulfillment is to be food for the things that burrow and squirm, for in their mindless hunger they are pure, undefiled by reason, and their purity elevates them above the putrefying pride of our race.

By writhing on your belly in abject terror you will rise up in awareness of truth; by the screams that fill the throat unsought is the mind purged of the corruption of faith. There is no purpose in birth, no salvation of the soul in life, no reward after death. Abandon hope and you shall become free, and with freedom acquire emptiness.

*The end:*
For as long as his essential salts persist upon the face of this world, so long shall the poet endure and mock his enemies in verse. There is no death that would erase his substance so utterly that he cannot arise renewed and reborn. It is in this dual assurance of impregnability and immortality that he offers his journey of life within these pages, which are illuminated for the wise but remain shadowed from the gaze of fools. Here are secrets found in no other book, for they are known to no other man. Their purchase is beyond price, but it is the whim of the poet to scatter them upon the dust, and through the future years, like precious pearls, either to be gathered up by men of perception of trodden beneath the hooves of swine.

You who read this book will bless the name Alhazred; yet when you read it for the second time will you curse his name bitterly and lament with tears that you ever held it; yet there are a few who will read it a third time and give blessing once again; and to those few all doors lie open.


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## Ozymandias (Sep 13, 2006)

"Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody."
Holden Caulfield at the end of The Catcher in the Rye


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## j d worthington (Sep 13, 2006)

Well, as I don't recall seeing anything saying a verse tale doesn't count:

Bonnie Kilmeny gaed up the glen;
But it wasna to meet Duneira's men,
Nor the rosy monk of the isle to see,
For Kilmeny was pure as pure could be.
It was only to hear the yorlin sing,
And pu' the cress-flower round the spring;
The scarlet hypp and the hindberrye,
And the nut that hung frae the hazel tree;
For Kilmeny was pure as pure could be.
But lang may her minny look o'er the wa',
And lang may she seek i' the green-wood shaw;
Lang the laird o' Duneira blame,
And lang, lang greet or Kilmeny come hame!

and the ending:

When a month and a day had come and gane,
Kilmeny sought the green-wood wene;
There laid her down on the leaves sae green,
And Kilmeny on earth was never mair seen.
But O, the words that fell from her mouth
Were words of wonder, and words of truth!
But all the land were in fear and dread,
For they kendna whether she was living or dead.
It wasna her hame, and she couldna remain;
She left this world of sorrow and pain,
And return'd to the land of thought again.

from _Kilmeny_, by James Hogg


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## Ozymandias (Sep 13, 2006)

Poems, eh?

I met a traveller from an antique land who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone stand in the desert. Near them on the sand, half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, and wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command tell that its sculptor well those passions read, which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things. The hand that mock'd them, and the heart that fed. And on the pedestal these words appear:

 "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
 Nothing beside remains. Round the decay 

of that collosal wreck,boundless and bare,

the lone and level sands stretch far away...

 Ozymandias of Egypt by Percy Bysshe Shelley. One of my favorites."What art man that thou should mind him?"


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## Nesacat (Sep 13, 2006)

Ozymandias ... that's one of my favourite poems. Always conjures up an image of this collosus standing alone with nothing but sand around him as far as the eye can see. Sand that shifts and moves and is never still.

j.d. That's a sad verse. Whimsical but sad. Yet it makes perfect sense some days.


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## Ozymandias (Sep 13, 2006)

Yeah, I like it 'cause it illustrates the hubris of man, and his eventual decline. Who's your favorite poet?


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## Nesacat (Sep 14, 2006)

I don't really have a favourite poet, just like do not have a favourite band or singer. I like some poems and some songs for the way the words sound when they are strung together and for the images they then conjure.

Some of the poets that come to mind are Longfellow, Tennyson (_Ring’d with the azure world, he  stands - _I read this one when I was very little and it was the first time I saw the word azure), Shelley, Frost (Fire & Ice), Neruda, Donne, Dante (I read the Divine Comedy every so often. I like the ring of the verses) , Basho, Gibran, Tagore, Donne, TS Eliot (Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats) .... there's many more. 

And one of my favourite descriptions by William Cowper because of my love for storms and the ocean. This is what always comes to mind when standing on the shore in a storm. 

God moves in a mysterious way 
His wonders to perform; 
He plants His footsteps in the sea, 
And rides upon the storm. 

*Fire and Ice - Robert Frost*

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice. 

*The Eagle - Tennyson*

He clasps the crag with crooked  hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring’d with the azure world, he  stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him  crawls;
He watches from his mountain  walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.


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## THWDP (Sep 16, 2006)

Ozymandias said:
			
		

> Poems, eh?
> 
> "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
> Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
> ...


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## Ozymandias (Sep 16, 2006)

I  read Smith's poem ages ago and enjoyed it very much. But I still like Shelley's better.


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## Ozymandias (Sep 16, 2006)

Nesacat said:
			
		

> .
> 
> Some of the poets that come to mind are Longfellow, Tennyson (_Ring’d with the azure world, he stands - _I read this one when I was very little and it was the first time I saw the word azure), Shelley, Frost (Fire & Ice), Neruda, Donne, Dante (I read the Divine Comedy every so often. I like the ring of the verses) , Basho, Gibran, Tagore, Donne, TS Eliot (Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats) .... there's many more.


 
 The Divine Comedy, huh? 

"This scum, who'd never lived, now fled about
Naked and goaded, for fierce swarm of hornets and wasps 
Stung all the wretched rout"

Yeah, it's a laugh a minute.  

  Which translation do you prefer? I like Dorothy Sayers myself, but she only translated the Inferno. Thus that is the only book I have read of the trilogy, unfortunately. If you haven't read her translation I reccomend it.


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