Always Coming Last Quotes & Sayings

A few years ago, long after it had been closed, Eli said he saw a girl swimming in it, coming out of the water in a bikini, laughing at her frigthtened boyfriend, seaweed snaking around her. He said she looked like a mermaid.
Deenie always pictured it like in one of those books of mythology she used to love, a girl rising from the foam gritted with pearls, mussels, the glitter of the sea.
"It looks beautiful", her mother had said once when they were driving by at night, its waters opaline. "It is beautiful. But it makes people sick."
To Deenie, it was one of many interesting things that adults said would kill you: Easter lilles, jellyfish, copperhead snakes with their diamond heads, tails bright as sulfur. Don't touch, don't taste, don't get too close.
And then, last week. — Megan Abbott

No you can't understand because you are reading the last chapter of something with out having read the first chapters. Young people always think they are coming into a story at the beginning when they are usually coming in at the end. — Joe Hill

Hello, old friend. And here we are. You and me, on the last page. By the time you read these words, Rory and I will be long gone. So know that we lived well and were very happy. And above all else, know that we will love you always. Sometimes I do worry about you though. I think once we're gone you won't be coming back here for awhile. And you might be alone. Which you should never be. Don't be alone, Doctor. And do one more thing for me. There's a little girl waiting in a garden. She's going to wait a long while, so she's going to need a lot of hope. Go to her. Tell her a story. Tell her that if she's patient, the days are coming that she'll never forget. Tell her she'll go to see and fight pirates. She'll fall in love with a man who'll wait two thousand years to keep her safe. Tell her she'll give hope to the greatest painter who ever lived. And save a whale in outer space. Tell her, this is the story of Amelia Pond. And this is how it ends. — Steven Moffat

I'm so sorry we were late," she was apologizing in her Lauren Bacall gracious woman mode, the one that always made people accept her apology. "John wasn't sure until the last minute whether he felt like coming or not. But I did so want to meet Aurora's new neighbors, and it was so kind of you to invite us ... — Charlaine Harris

She lived a good deal by herself, to herself, working, passing on from day to day, and always thinking, trying to lay hold on life, to grasp it in her own understanding. Her active living was suspended, but underneath, in the darkness, something was coming to pass. If only she could break through the last integuments! — D.H. Lawrence

We are always looking forward to the passing and ending of winter, but when summer is here it seems as if summer must always last. As I went across the fields that day, I found myself half lamenting that the world must fade again, even that the best of her budding and bloom was only a preparation for another spring-time, for an awakening beyond the coming winter's sleep. — Sarah Orne Jewett

It was with the last revolution and the coming of INGSOC (Inglish/English Socialism) that the latest High learnt how to keep their position permanently - by cultivating ignorance among the other classes and by constantly surveying them through the Thought Police. Part of this strategy included the maintenance of a state of continual warfare, which Goldstein discussed in the third chapter. The three major powers were not fighting this perpetual war for victory; they were fighting to keep a state of emergency always present as the surest guarantee of authoritarianism. — George Orwell

I should see the garden far better," said Alice to herself, "if I could get to the top of that hill: and here's a path that leads straight to it - at least, no it doesn't do that - " (after going a few yards along the path, and turning several sharp corners), "but I suppose it will at last. But how curiously it twists! It's more like a corkscrew than a path! Well, this turn goes to the hill, I suppose - no, it doesn't! This goes straight back to the house! Well then, I'll try it the other way." And so she did: wandering up and down, and trying turn after turn, but always coming back to the house, do what she would. Indeed, once, when she turned a corner rather more quickly than usual, she ran against it before she could stop herself. — Lewis Carroll

There are no tarts in there, Charles. They were much too expensive, and Mr. Jenkins would not be reasonable. I told him I would buy a whole dozen, but he would not reduce the price by so much as a penny, so I refused to buy even one-on principle. Do you know," she confided with a chuckle, "last week when he saw me coming into his shop he hid behind the flour sacks?"
"He's a coward!" Charles said, grinning, for it was a known fact among tradesmen and shopkeepers that Elizabeth Cameron pinched a shilling until it squeaked, and that when it came to bargaining for price-which it always did with her-they rarely came out the winner. Her intellect, not her beauty, was her greatest asset in these transactions, for she could not only add and multiply in her head, but she was so sweetly reasonable, and so inventive when she listed her reasons for expecting a better price, that she either wore out her opponents or confused them into agreeing with her — Judith McNaught

Alone is how she feels, alone is how she'll always be. You're used to solitude, she tells herself. Be a stoic.
Then she's enfolded.
She'd waited so long, she'd given up waiting. She'd longed for this, and denied it was possible. But now how easy it is, like coming home must have been once, for those who'd had homes. Walking through the doorway into the familiar, the place that knows you, opens to you, allows you in. Tells you the stories you've needed to hear. Stories of the hands as well, and of the mouth.
I've missed you. Who said that?
A shape against the night window, glint of an eye. Dark heartbeat.
Yes. At last. It's you. — Margaret Atwood

Grief. The first is anticipatory. This is hospice grief. Prognostic grief. This is the grief that comes when you drive your dog to the vet for the very last time. This is the death row inmate's family's grief. See that pain in the distance? It's on its way. This is the grief that it is somewhat possible to prepare for. You finish all business. You come to terms. Goodbyes are said and said again. Anguish stalks the chambers of your heart and you steel yourself for the impending presence of an everlasting absence. This grief is an instrument of torture. It squeezes and pulls and presses down. Grief that follows an immediate loss comes on like a stab wound. This is the second kind of grief. It is a cutting pain and it is always a surprise. You never see it coming. It is a grief that can't be — Jill Alexander Essbaum

I have always thought that the notion of a Republic is a noble one, dating back to the glory days of Hellas, which all D'Angelines regard fondly as the last Golden Era before the coming of Elua. Now, seeing it in action, I was not so sure. — Jacqueline Carey

Common sense says go home and forget it, no money coming in. Common sense always speaks too late. Common sense is the guy who tells you you ought to have had your brakes relined last week before you smashed a front end this week. Common sense is the Monday morning quarterback who could have won the ball game if he had been on the team. But he never is. He's high up in the stands with a flask on his hip. Common sense is the little man in a gray suit who never makes a mistake in addition. But it's always somebody else's money he's adding up — Raymond Chandler

This is the way the wheel turns, coming at last to full circle, with wild as well as tame at he crib; lion and turtle-dove together an barnyard beasts lying down with the fox. For wild and tame are but two hlaves and here, where all begins and ends, everything must be whole.
And always, among the sleepers, there must be somebody waking - somewhere, someone, waking and watchful. Or what would happen to the world..? — P.L. Travers

No. You can't understand. Because you're reading the last chapter of something without having read the first chapter. You're a little guy, Bode. Kids always think they're coming into a story at the beginning, when they're usually coming in at the end. — Joe Hill

I watched the rain stream across the window in little rivulets with sunshine coming through. For me, the rain has always been an emotional thing that makes me very happy. However, living with the fact that it will never last forever breaks my heart. The slow falling rain reminds me of the time when I and my father would just watch the rain until it stopped. It has been a warm memory ever since. — Manasa Rao

You smart girls are always the last to figure these things out. Why would a guy like me ask you out if all I wanted was friendship? You may be cute, but you're not too observant." "Huh?" I said again. I understood the words coming out of his mouth, but the meaning behind them was a mystery. It was like he was intentionally trying to confuse me. Leaning — Cookie O'Gorman

Celaena threw her weight into the dagger she held aloft, and gained an inch. His arms strained. She was going to kill him. She truly going to kill him.
He made himself look into her eyes, look at the face so twisted with rage that he couldn't find her.
"Celaena," he said, squeezing her wrists so hard that he hoped the pain registered somewhere- wherever she had gone. But she still wouldn't lossen her grip on the blade. "Celaena, I'm your friend."
She stared at him, panting through gritted teeth, her breath coming quicker and quicker before she roared, the sound filling the room, his blood, his world: "You will never be my friend. You will always be my enemy."
She bellowed the last word with such soul-deep hated that he felt it like a punch to the gut. She surged again, and he lost his grip on the wrist that held the dagger. The blade plunged down. — Sarah J. Maas

Wherever I go, I'll always see you. You'll always be with me. And there's no happy ending coming here, no way a story that started on a night that's burned into my heart will end the way I wish it could. You're really gone, no last words, and no matter how many letters I write to you, you're never going to reply. You're never going to say good-bye. So I will. Good-bye, Julia. Thank you for being my friend. Thank you for being you. — Elizabeth Scott

It is always the first and last steps that are the hardest to take. We walk away and try not to turn back, or we stand just outside the gates, terrified to find what's waiting for us now that we've returned. In between, we stumble blindly from one place and life to the next. We try to do the best we can. There are moments like this, however, when we are neither coming nor going, and all we have to do is sit and look back on the life we have made. — Dinaw Mengestu

He had never liked October. Ever since he had first lay in the autumn leaves before his grandmother's house many years ago and heard the wind and saw the empty trees. It had made him cry, without a reason. And a little of that sadness returned each year to him. It always went away with spring.
But, it was a little different tonight. There was a feeling of autumn coming to last a million years.
There would be no spring. ("The October Game") — Ray Bradbury

The deaths of children in poor countries from diarrhea, measles, and malaria have become part of the background of the world we live in, and if we know about it at all, we are likely to believe that it is a problem that will always be with us. But that isn't so. In the last two years, we have saved a million children. In the coming years, if we all give substantially more, we can save the entire 8.8 million. — Peter Singer

A fan is always an outsider. Most sportswriters are not, by this definition, fans. They capitalize on access to athletes. They spoke to Kobe last night, and Kobe says his finger is going to be fine. They spent three days fly-fishing with Brett Favre in March, and Brett says he's definitely coming back for another season. — Malcolm Gladwell