A writer's life revolves around always knowing what to say and how to say it. But in the face of death, you'd think fear, pain and pressure would trump eloquence when speaking their last words. However, in the true form of their craft, (most of) these writers combine both honesty and eloquence to produce some of the greatest (and weirdest!) last words spoken. Here's a list of our favorite last words!
Know of any writers whose last words really stand out? Let us know in the comments!
Before suffering a fatal stroke in 1859, author of "The Legend of Sleepy Hallow" and "Rip Van Winkle" Washington Irving was preparing his bed for the night when he turned to his niece and said, "I have to set my pillows one more night; when will this end already?"
When the poet became too ill to leave her bed, Dickinson would write short notes to her family members in order to communicate. The last note she wrote read: "I must go in, the fog is rising."
Moments after Chekhov told his wife that he was about to die, he picked up a glass of champagne and said, "It's a long time since I drank champagne." After finishing the glass, he laid down on his bed and died.
Immediately before dying of cerebral meningitis in 1900, Wilde stated "Either that wallpaper goes, or I do."
Before committing suicide after suffering a breakdown (of which she had many in her lifetime), Woolf penned a suicide note to her husband which read: "I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times. And I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can't concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do ... I can't go on spoiling your life any longer. I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been. V"
When her husband asked her how she felt, the writer replied, "Beautiful" before passing away.
As O'Neill was dying at the Sheraton Hotel in Boston, he whispered the words: "I knew it. I knew it. Born in a hotel room, and God damn it, died in a hotel room."
When her sister, Cassandra, asked her if she wanted anything, Jane Austen replied by saying, "Nothing, but death." Soon afterwards, she passed away.
The "Peter Pan" author's last words were "I can't sleep," before dying of pneumonia on June 19, 1937.
Before dying of coronary thrombosis in 1956, Walter De La Mare stated that it was "Too late for fruit, too soon for flowers."
William Sidney Porter, otherwise known as O. Henry, was quoted as saying "Turn up the lights, I don't want to go home in the dark" before passing away on June 5th, 1910 after a long battle with liver problems.
Desperate to relieve the pain that the tuberculosis caused him, he pleaded his doctor for an overdose of morphine. In a fit of rage, he shouted, "Kill me, or else you are a murderer!" which were his last spoken words.
Before dying of a stroke in 1679, Hobbes was said to have whispered, "I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark."
Charlotte Bronte's last words were spoken to her husband of 9 months, to whom she said "Oh, I am not going to die, am I? He will not separate us, we have been so happy." She died with her husband by her side later that day.
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