Lines in books that make your throat catch

[pongping]

Just been re-reading When We Were Very Young, and the lines in the last poem, Vespers, bring a tear to my eye every time:

Hush, hush, whisper who dares,
Christopher Robin is saying his prayers

I'm not sure why - I think it's the beauty of the innocence, the image of a lost world (the book is all nurses and stockings)?

In fact, just the title of the collection gives me a shiver.

The Seamus Heaney poem is heartbreaking

Especially as it is autobiographical and about his little brother.

The last Harry Potter book when Harry turns the stone and his parents, friends and family appear. He deals to his father and says
"Will you stay with me?"
"Until the end"
Makes me cry every time.

Deals?! Turns!! Stupid phone.

Oh God the end of Some Dogs Do....where the little dog who can fly (nobody believes him) asks his Dad why the other dogs are laughing...he's lost his belief and his Daddy flies up with him and says "Some dogs do and some dogs don't" (fly that is)

Also a little book called Beegu about a small alien who is mistreated on earth and when his parents collect him they ask what earth is like...he says that the people are cold but that he remembers the small ones...and that they "seemed hopeful".

The bit when Helen Burns dies in Jane Eyre and the teacher finds her and Jane all cuddled up in bed. Jane is asleep and Helen is dead

I couldn't have No matter what in the house now. I adapted the last bit slightly and use it in a memorial service at work last year. It was perfect but I can't read the book anymore.

"How lucky I am to have somebody that makes saying goodbye so hard."
Another A. A. Milne quote I heard at a child's funeral. Makes me cry even now.

Watership Down: "My heart has joined the thousand, for my friend stopped running today." So beautiful, so poignant.

Les Miserables, though this has to be taken on context of the whole of Fantine's story: "We shall have no further need to speak of M. Felix Tholomyes. We will only say here, that twenty years later, under King Louis Philippe, he was a fat provincial attorney, rich and influential, a wise elector and rigid juryman; always, however, a man of pleasure."

And finally, at the end of The Diary of Anne Frank, where it is simply printed "Anne's Diary ends here." As a child I used to re-read the end of the book, over and over, hoping that one day I would turn to the final page and find that those words, and the epilogue, had gone.

Mine are from the lovely bones by Alice Sebold. My friend was murdered and this book both comforts and upsets me.

Sometimes the dreams that come true are the dreams you never even knew you had.?

?The dead are never exactly seen by the living, but many people seem acutely aware of something changed around them. They speak of a chill in the air. The mates of the deceased wake from dreams and see a figure standing at the end of thier bed, or in a doorway, or boarding, phantomlike, a city bus.?

?Inside the snow globe on my father's desk, there was a penguin wearing a red-and-white-striped scarf. When I was little my father would pull me into his lap and reach for the snow globe. He would turn it over, letting all the snow collect on the top, then quickly invert it. The two of us watched the snow fall gently around the penguin. The penguin was alone in there, I thought, and I worried for him. When I told my father this, he said, "Don't worry, Susie; he has a nice life. He's trapped in a perfect world.?

God, I love Never Let Me Go. It's awesome!

Crying like a baby reading this thread. The end of 'I am David' still gets me:

Then David said in French, "Madame, I'm David. I'm..."
He could say no more. The woman looked into his face and said clearly and distinctly, "David...My son David..."

And the end of The Phantom of the Opera where there's a note in the newspaper that just says, 'Eric is dead.'

My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff's miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning: my great thought in living is himself. If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger: I should not seem a part of it.?My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being. So don't talk of our separation again: it is impracticable.
Wuthering Heights

In 'The Truce' by Primo Levi.

There is a section talking about a little boy who lived and died (aged 3) in Auschwitz . His name was Hurbinek,and Primo Levi writes:

"Nothing remains of him:he bears witness through these words of mine."

From A Thousand Splendid Suns:

"Mariam wished for so much in those final moments. Yet as she closed her eyes, it was not regret any longer but a sensation of abundant peace that washed over her. She thought of her entry into this world, the harami child of a lowly villager, an unintended thing, a pitiable, regrettable accident. A weed. And yet she was leaving the world as a friend, a companion, a guardian. A mother. A person of consequence at last. No. It was not so bad, Mariam thought, that she should die this way. Not so bad. This was a legtimate end to a life of illegitimate beginnings."

There's a book by James Patterson (The notebook maybe?) that's written from a father to a son and he's talking about the last time he saw his wife before she got in the car. She died in a car accident shortly after. The lines reads something like "your mother didn't wave, her arms were full. They were full of you". Dear reader, I bawled.

?After all this time??
?Always,? said Snape.?

And the trumpets sounded for her on the other side.

Busman's honeymoon, DLSayers.

"But in the corner, leaning against the wall, sat the little girl with red cheeks and smiling mouth, frozen to death on the last evening of the old year. The New Year's sun rose upon a little pathetic figure. The child sat there, stiff and cold, holding the matches, of which one bundle was almost burned."

Fillyjonk I'm not going to spoil it for you, but there's even more tears to come further on, almost at the very end of the book. Don't turn to the end and read it yet though! I love The Light Between Oceans.

Totally agree with Winnie the Pooh, and lots of other quotes in this thread.

I think someone must be chopping onions

"But the mothers stayed up to prepare the food for the journey with tender care, and washed their children and packed the luggage; and at dawn the barbed wire was full of children's washing hung out in the wind to dry. Nor did they forget the diapers, the toys, the cushions and the hundred other small things which mothers remember and which children always need. Would you not do the same? If you and your child were going to be killed tomorrow, would you not give him to eat today?"

Actually. It doesn't make my throat catch. It breaks my heart. Every time.

A Long Way From Home
"when moz woke,his fluff was frozen and he was cold to the bone.shivering in his lonely bed,he thought about his snugly sister Tam,squeezed into the nest with all the cosy night-snufflings of his family.even his tears froze.how he longed to go home.

Just remembered Owl Babies. Can't remember the line as the dds are v old now, but it was something like, 'And she came!' when mother comes back from finding food. It's v sweet.

Another one here for ' "Miss Jean-Louise, stand up, your father's passin'."'

There's a bit from Margaret Forster's Hidden Lives, just before her mother dies. She's worked her fingers to the bone all her life to try and better her family, and she quietly says something like 'well. It's not been much of a life.' It's so sad. I bawled.