Sanity returns (in most cases) when the book is closed.

The book to end all books. The final book. After this, there is no more writing, no more publishing.

When the last reader reads no more.

Like the pages of a book soaked shut by time.

A book that is shut is but a block.

Finishing a good book is like leaving a good friend.

In the case of a novel, or any imaginative work, especially if the tone is poetic, my own preference is for ending with a touch of symbolism which shall leave the reader brooding. A fine novel, a well-written story, "proves" nothing. Certain characters have played their parts, life goes on, and the final passage may be allowed to remain with one foot in the air, as is the case with some of Chopin's conclusions. But there is no absolute rule in such matters, and there are epic novelists who like to end on a powerful crescendo, as Ravel does in Bolero, or Dvorak in the New-World Symphony. Composition has features which are common to all the arts, and the author can learn as much about his business in the concert hall as in the library.

The first page sells this book. The last page sells your next book.

The real Bible is a sealed book, an apocryphon, a book not to be opened (mentally) until its time has come. (2:568)

What sense of superiority it gives one to escape reading some book which every one else is reading.

This is the final book about Brian