Last Words

Someone who dies instantaneously or in their sleep cannot see it coming. Someone who has been fatally shot but is still conscious has time to say something but might not have much time to say it in. Kossara Vymezal says:

"'Dominic, darling,' he barely heard, 'I wish -' He heard no more."

-A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows, XVII, p. 562.

I have just returned to the public library a thriller in which a woman shot point-blank in the back says that she wishes...

In James Blish's Cities In Flight, a philosopher says:

"'I think -'"

-James Blish, The Triumph of Time IN Blish, Cities In Flight (London, 1981), pp. 466-596 AT CHAPTER SEVEN, p. 595 -

- as the universe ends. (Maybe that is appropriate.)

Another work by Blish ends in mid-sentence as the viewpoint character dies. Of everyone who dies, we can ask not only what they said but also what was left unsaid.