Dying Is Easy, Comedy Is Hard: What Writers Really Said Before the End

We obsess over writers' first lines — "Call me Ishmael," "It was the best of times" — but what about their last ones? Not the polished final sentences of their novels, but the actual, messy, sometimes hilarious words that tumbled from their lips as the curtain fell. Turns out, some of the greatest literary minds in history went out with one-liners that would make a stand-up comedian jealous, while others mumbled things so bizarre that scholars are still scratching their heads centuries later.

Let's start with the heavyweight champion of literary deathbed wit: Oscar Wilde. Lying in a dingy Parisian hotel room in 1900, broke and broken by scandal, Wilde reportedly looked at the hideous wallpaper and said, "Either that wallpaper goes, or I do." The wallpaper stayed. Now, some scholars dispute whether he actually said this — his friend Robert Ross recorded slightly different versions — but honestly, does it matter? It's so perfectly Wilde that if he didn't say it, he should have. The man spent his entire life crafting bon mots; it would have been a cosmic injustice for him to exit with something dull.

Then there's Henrik Ibsen, the father of modern drama, who spent his final years partially paralyzed after a series of strokes. When his nurse cheerfully told a visitor that the playwright was "a little better today," Ibsen roused himself just enough to snap, "On the contrary!" and promptly died. You have to admire the commitment. The man literally used his last breath to correct someone. If that isn't the most writer thing imaginable, I don't know what is.

Leo Tolstoy's exit was considerably more dramatic, as you'd expect from the guy who wrote "War and Peace." In 1910, at age 82, he fled his own home in the middle of the night — essentially running away from his wife, Sophia, after decades of an increasingly toxic marriage. He made it to a remote railway station called Astapovo, collapsed with pneumonia, and as journalists and followers gathered outside, he reportedly said, "But the peasants — how do peasants die?" Even at death's door, Tolstoy was obsessing over the common man. The irony of a count wondering how regular people handle dying, while an entire circus of reporters camped outside his window, is almost too rich.

Not all last words are profound or witty. Some are just deeply, wonderfully strange. Take the case of Goethe, Germany's Shakespeare. According to his doctor, Goethe's final words were "Mehr Licht!" — "More light!" Generations of scholars have interpreted this as a grand metaphorical statement about enlightenment and the human spirit reaching toward knowledge even in death. The more mundane explanation? The old man probably just wanted someone to open the damn curtains. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes a dying man asking for light just wants to see better.

Edgar Allan Poe, master of the macabre, died as mysteriously as he lived. Found delirious on the streets of Baltimore in 1849, wearing someone else's clothes (still unexplained), he was taken to a hospital where he spent days raving. His last coherent words were reportedly, "Lord help my poor soul." For the man who invented detective fiction and wrote some of the most chilling horror stories in the English language, this feels almost disappointingly normal. You'd expect something about ravens or premature burial, but no — just a simple, desperate prayer. Maybe that's the most terrifying thing of all.

O. Henry, the short story master known for his twist endings, delivered one final twist of his own. On his deathbed in 1910, he reportedly said, "Turn up the lights, I don't want to go home in the dark." It's a line from a popular song of the era, but coming from O. Henry, it reads like the setup to one of his famous surprise finales. You keep waiting for the punchline, the reversal — and then you realize that death was the twist ending all along.

Here's one that doesn't get enough attention: Henry David Thoreau, the man who went to the woods to live deliberately, was asked on his deathbed whether he had made his peace with God. His response? "I did not know that we had quarreled." This is the most Thoreau sentence ever uttered. Even dying, the man was a contrarian. You can almost picture his relatives rolling their eyes — "Henry, for once, could you just give a normal answer?"

Jane Austen's last words were considerably less quotable but somehow deeply moving. When her sister Cassandra asked if she wanted anything, Austen replied, "Nothing but death." It's blunt, unadorned, and honest — exactly like her prose. No sentimentality, no grand declarations. Just a tired woman who'd had enough. There's a quiet dignity in that kind of clarity.

Of course, we should acknowledge the elephant in the room: most recorded "last words" are probably fictional, embellished, or at least cleaned up by whoever was standing nearby with a pen. Deathbed scenes in the 18th and 19th centuries were practically performance art — families would gather, a scribe would record, and everyone expected a good show. The pressure to deliver a memorable exit line must have been immense. Imagine lying there, barely conscious, knowing that whatever nonsense you mumble about wanting more pudding is going to be chiseled into literary history.

Some writers, to their eternal credit, refused to play the game entirely. Karl Marx, when his housekeeper begged him for some final words, reportedly growled, "Go on, get out! Last words are for fools who haven't said enough." Which is, ironically, one of the greatest last lines ever recorded. Marx spent his whole life arguing that actions matter more than words, and he stuck to that conviction right to the bitter end.

And then there's Anton Chekhov, whose death in 1904 was so perfectly Chekhovian it reads like fiction. Suffering from tuberculosis in a German hotel, his doctor offered him champagne — a traditional signal that medicine had done all it could. Chekhov took a sip, said "It's been a long time since I've had champagne," turned on his side, and died. A champagne cork reportedly popped loudly somewhere in the hotel at the exact moment. The absurd beauty of it — a dying man savoring one last glass while the world carries on with its little celebrations — is straight out of one of his own stories.

What strikes me most about these final utterances is how perfectly they match the writers who spoke them. Wilde was witty, Tolstoy was tortured, Chekhov was bittersweet, and Marx was combative. It's as if a lifetime of crafting sentences had trained their brains to produce characteristic lines even as the lights were going out. Or maybe we just remember the ones that fit the narrative and forget the rest.

Either way, there's something deeply comforting about the idea that even at the very end, words still mattered to these people. They didn't just die — they edited their own exits. And if that isn't the most human thing in the world, I don't know what is. So here's a thought to keep you up tonight: if you had one sentence left, what would yours be? Better start drafting.