From F. Scott Fitzgerald to Virginia Woolf, some lines to inspire

As favorite sentences hit my inbox last week, themes of loss and regret, and of hope and optimism, emerged.

And, to me, merged.

Fred Keller of Edina nominated the last line of "The Great Gatsby" by St. Paul native F. Scott Fitzgerald: "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

Alliteration propels that line, as it expresses a yearning for a do-over in life.

Citing the Amor Towles novel "A Gentleman in Moscow," Carl Stahlmann of Greenfield wrote: "The very last line, if a novel can be known by its last, made me wonder if perhaps he wrote it first."

That line: "And there in the corner, at a table for two, her hair tinged with grey, the willowy woman waited."

That mood reminded me of the last line of Ernest Hemingway's World War I novel "A Farewell to Arms," whose central character has just seen the body of his lover, who died in childbirth: "After a while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain."

Hemingway reportedly rewrote that line 39 times until he was satisfied.

And now, for hope:

Mike Lein, a writer in Norwood Young America, quotes from Richard K. Nelson's book "The Island Within": "There may be more to learn by climbing the same mountain a hundred times than by climbing a hundred different mountains."

"I think that too often we scramble to see everything, and thus don't see and appreciate the individual trees in the forest," Lein said.

A Minneapolis writer, Sharon Wagner, quotes Neil deGrasse Tyson: "So you're made of detritus [from exploded stars]. Get over it. Or better yet, celebrate it. After all, what nobler thought can one cherish than that the universe lives within us all?"

Finally, another Wagner offering, from Virginia Woolf: "When the Day of Judgment dawns and people, great and small, come marching in to receive their heavenly rewards, the Almighty will gaze upon the mere bookworms and say to Peter, 'Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them. They have loved reading.'"

Keep those favorites coming!

Gary Gilson conducts writing workshops online. He can be reached through www.writebetterwithgary.com.