“But in that we started so many things in that moment, we brought to their ends many others that have been the subject matter of this account, and so here is where I draw a line across the leaf and call it the end.”
Final sentence of the novel, possibly addressing criticism of the author’s previous endings, Part 13, "Reconstitution"
Anathem (2008)
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Neal Stephenson 167
American science fiction writer 1959Related quotes

Source: Billy Budd, the Sailor (1891), Ch. 21
Source: Billy Budd, Sailor
Context: Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blendingly enter into the other? So with sanity and insanity. In pronounced cases there is no question about them. But in some supposed cases, in various degrees supposedly less pronounced, to draw the exact line of demarcation few will undertake tho' for a fee some professional experts will. There is nothing nameable but that some men will undertake to do it for pay.

“Why do so many things end in fire?”
Lemony Snicket
Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography (2002)

“Certitude is not the test of certainty. We have been cocksure of many things that were not so.”
1910s, "Natural Law", 32 Harvard Law Review 40, 41 (1918)