Last Line Quiz--The Solution

[Spoiler warning: last lines of several novels are revealed in this posting.]

OK, here are the answers to last Friday's quiz:

1. I enjoy the movement of life—kids falling in love, performing birds (there was an article on Aderyn the Blind Bird Queen in a popular periodical just after she died), new gelato flavors, ceremonies, anthills, poetry, loins, lions, the music of the eight tuned Chinese pipes suspended from an economically carved and highly stylized owl head at our window facing the lake maddened into the sweetest cacophony by a tramontana that will not abate in its passion, the woman below calling her son in (his name is Orlando and she says his father will be furioso), the ombrellone on our roof terrace blown out of its metal plinth, the spitted faraone for dinner tonight with a bottle of Menicocci, anything in fact that’s unincestuous.
   --Anthony Burgess, M/F
   
   
2. Before reaching the final line, however, he had already understood that he would never leave that room, for it was foreseen that the city of mirrors (or mirages) would be wiped out by the wind and exiled from the memory of men at the precise moment when Aureliano Babilonia would finish deciphering the parchments, and that everything written on them was unrepeatable since time immemorial and forever more, because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth.
   --Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
   
   
3. 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.
   --Albert Camus, The Stranger
   
   
4. Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen white surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago.
   --Herman Melville, Moby Dick
   
   
5. He thrilled as each cage door opened and the wild sables made their leap and broke for the snow—black on white, black on white, black on white, and then gone.
   --Martin Cruz Smith, Gorky Park
   
   
6. I felt like a monster reincarnation of Horatio Alger…a Man on the Move, and just sick enough to be totally confident.
   --Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
   
   
7. A present for my friends, he thought, and looked forward inside his mind, where no one could see, to Thanksgiving.
   --Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly
   
   
8. My earrings turned back to water and trickled down my shoulders; I shrugged the drops off my beautiful fur.
   --Angela Carter, The Tiger Bride
   
   
9. If cuckolds catch a second wind, I am eagerly waiting for mine.
   --John Irving, The 158-Pound Marriage
   
   
10. The knife came down, missing him by inches, and he took off.
    --Joseph Heller, Catch 22
    
    
11. “Thank goodness!” said Bilbo laughing, and handed him the tobacco-jar.
    --J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit
    
    
12. It’s just fairer than death, that’s all.
    --William Goldman, The Princess Bride
    
    
13. One bird said to Billy Pilgrim, “Poo-tee-weet?”
    --Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughter-House Five
    
    
14. I been away a long time.
    --Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
    
    
15. The Ramans do everything in threes.
    --Arthur C. Clarke, Rendezvous With Rama
    
    
16. He never saw Molly again.
    --William Gibson, Neuromancer
    
    
17. I was cured all right.
    --Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
    
    
18. “So may you all.”
    --John Gardner, Grendel
    
    
19. “Terminal.”
    --John Barth, The End of the Road
    
    
20. Yes?
    --Philip Roth, Portnoy's Complaint

OK, what fun's a quiz without a clever scoring system?

        0-2: Fear and Loathing   (Poor)
        3-6: The Strangers   (Fair)
      7-10: Scanners Darkly   (Good)
      11-15: Good Reading Hobbits   (Excellent)
    16-20: The End of the Read   (Superior)