Famous Last Words, Fond Farewells, Deathbed Diatribes, and Exclamations Upon Expiration

by Ray Robinson

“Don’t let it end like this. Tell them I said something.”—Pancho Villa

“Drink to me!”—Pablo Picasso

A collection of notable last recorded words of the dying, Famous Last Words is bursting with life, hope, wisdom, and often laughter. Here are writers, philosophers, athletes, kings and queens, movie stars, politicians, and more, in all sorts of moods and states of preparedness. Some merely want to say goodbye to loved ones, others want to create a legacy.

Ultimately, every one of these parting statements is a reflection of the person behind it. Each is accompanied by a mini-biography of the speaker, including the context of death, from the golf course (“That was a great game of golf, fellers.”—Bing Crosby) to a favorite armchair (“Go on, get out. Last words are for fools who haven't said enough.”—Karl Marx).
 

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Humor, Reference, Historical, Biography, Death

192 pages, Hardcover

First published September 5, 2003

Reviews

[Simon · Rating 2 out of 5]

Kind of just a read for the heck of it. I was interested if finding quotes and stuff for my blog at first, but I just ended up reading the book to get it over with. So it's not like the book was bad, I just had no desire in it or heart to continue. I did read every word and imagined the person uttering these words as they died, and it was like a historical journey back into the lives of famous people or people who gave something to the world.

It was a final tribute to the unknown mystery of death, something we all will find out eventually.

[Christine Starkey · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of those books that I bought on a whim and read in a day. Not a whole lot to say about this book that isn't evident from the title, but it's filled with fun facts and I consider it a cool coffee table read. Another one of my cute, crazy reads to leave lying around my place for people to pick up and peruse at random.

[Cynthia (Bingeing On Books) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a great impulse buy! I loved reading about some of the last words that famous people have said. This book has last words from all types of famous people: Presidents and other government officials, actors and actresses, musicians, etc. Some of the famous last words were poignant and some were really funny. The only thing I didn't necessarily like was that the author threw in a couple of eulogies of famous dead people. I wasn't nearly as interested in someone's eulogy as I was in what that person said right before they died. Otherwise, great read!

[Marc · Rating 1 out of 5]

Gave up halfway through this slim collection I received as a Christmas gift. Quotes weren't all that interesting, which didn't necessarily surprise me--just because you're famous and someone captures your last words doesn't mean they'll be memorable.

[Tim Chandler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great morbid coffee table book

[Mr. Grr · Rating 4 out of 5]

A compilation of "Fond Farewells, Death Diatribes, and Exclamations Upon Expiration"! Robinson shares with us a collection of famous last words. It's short and sweet and wonderfully entertaining!

[Debs · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting read.

[Jayajanani Pattabhiraman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Short, fun compilation of literally the last words from those you'd be curious about (the "famous" ones) and many others coming your way just because of what lay in the words they said. Just to name a few that are included - Vincent Van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Anna Pavlova, Sigmund Freud, Thomas Edison, George Washington, Jane Austen, Karl Marx. Stealing some words from the book itself because it rightly describes the experience - "The beauty of some of these last words is that they may open a window through which we feel we can catch a glimpse, if only for a moment, of the entire life that preceded it."
Ray Robinson's Famous Last Words is a palm-sized book that packs a bunch of bittersweet words from some of the best the world has ever seen.

[David]

Kind of fun to read these one-page summaries with the final words of a very wide range of personages - poets, philosophers, athletes, criminals, politicians, movie stars, soldiers, pilots, tycoons, and the condemned. The longest last words are by Erwin Rommel, Socrates, Lou Gehrig, John Brown, Virginia Woolf, while the three pages of "Most Annoying Last Words" goes to infamous mobster Dutch Schultz (recorded by a police stenographer as he lay dying in Newark City Hospital after being ambushed by assassins 1935 in a restaurant.

Too bad the 177 pages does not have an index of these "authors" so I can easily go back and find the full page of, e.g., Socrates in 399 BC, Nero who in 64 AD committed suicide, or Lou Gehrig's public words to his fans as he was dying. No alphabetizing of the authors quoted. None of key Last key words.

So can we guess who were (mostly criminals, murderers, assassins) Francis Crowley, Ida Straus, Horace Tabor, Charles Guiteau, Charles Fox, Paul Wellstone, Wilson Mizner, Rob Hall, Robert Maxwell (quoted from a satirical magazine "Here lies Robert Maxwell. He lies everywhere else."), Moe Berg, Clarence Barron, Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, Robert Scott, Ramon Narvaez, Connie Evans, John Lamb, Brian Sweeney, Carl Panzram, George Appel, Martha Beck, Jessica Dubroff, Edmund Gwenn, or Arthur Flegenheimer?

[Sevenponds · Rating 4 out of 5]

Are a person’s last words important? Do they leave some indelible mark on this world, having been the final vocalizations of a human being before he or she passes into the next one?

I’ll leave that for you to decide. But one thing’s certain: famous last words are quite entertaining.

This cute little book by Ray Robinson (which, by the way, would make a fantastic gift– stocking stuffer!) compiles the dying words of everyone from Pablo Picasso to D.H. Lawrence to Thomas Edison into one volume. The words are often funny or poignant, but they occasionally can be heart-rending. D.H. Lawrence, dying of tuberculosis, called out to his friend, “Maria, don’t let me die!” Noel Coward said simply, “Goodnight, my darlings. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

[Continued]

Full SevenPonds Review:
http://blog.sevenponds.com/lending-in...

[Wisty · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great little book that I bought on a whim. Here's what I've learned: people always have interesting things to say right before they're executed and the Bronte sisters are the saddest family ever. Seriously, Charlotte's page really made me sad- her mom and four sisters all died of tuberculosis (as many people in this book did, unfortunately), and she escaped it only to die of morning sickness while pregnant one year into her happy marriage. Really unfair.
I could've gone for more explanation paragraphs on the people, because some of this explanations were pretty vague.
All in all, a really interesting little read. It was a fun activity, going through this book with my brother. We both have a thing about last words and speeches, so this was a perfect thing to read together.

[em · Rating 3 out of 5]

a quick & lighthearted read, despite the morbid format. found the deathbed quotes both funny & insightful at times. i will be giving a few of them a google to see how their whole life played out prior to their death. do wish there was more variety in the quotes when it came to female/poc/lgbtqia rep. which i know sounds weird when it's a book about 'last words', but honestly the weirdness comes from the fact that it shouldn't need to be said. cis/white/male sports stars aren't the only ppl who die last time i checked.

here are some other important people that should've been featured:
martha p. johnson
harvey milk
judy garland
frida kahlo
jimi hendrix
freddie mercury
janis joplin
kurt cobain
selena
mahatma gandhi

...just to name a few

[Anna Jaskiewicz · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short but interesting read. There were many names I recognized and many that I did not. If anything, this book has piqued my interest in history and has made me consider reading more biographies in the future. Ironically, my favorite set of “Last Words” within the book weren’t actually said by a person at all. “You get on with your life. I’ve got to go” was quoted from Mickey Taylor as he shared what he believed were the final words of his famed race horse, Seattle Slew. I suppose the last words could be credited to Taylor, but it was his horse that passed and shared those words with just a knowing glance.

[Robert Hepple · Rating 3 out of 5]

A small collection of last words said by, or about various mostly famous people over the years. The author does make the point in his intro that some quotes are clearly apocryphal, but that doesn’t stop it being an amusing light read – you can’t help getting the impression that famous people, on their deathbeds, have an urge to say something really witty before they go. On a more poignant level, an answerphone message left by a 9/11 air passenger can only be seen as very sad, setting it apart from the flippancy of the rest of the book.

[Cynthia Egbert · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this one through periodically as it is fun and in a few cases makes me really think and ponder. What would you want your last words to be? My personal favorite is, "Good, a woman who can fart is not dead". The Comtesse de Vercellis said these words to an embarrassed guest in her home and then keeled over. Wow. So glad that her servant was there to catch this utterance and go on to write her biography and immortalize her final statement.

[Lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was fairly interesting for what it was. Since it wasn't a novel with a legitimate story line I couldn't exactly find it particularly intriguing, so I couldn't exactly fall in love with it. However, it was kind of fascinating. Some were a little funny, and I believe there were one or two quotes that made me tear up. Now I probably wouldn't read it all again, just check up on something I'm curious about. I would recommend reading it once, though.

[Christian · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an enjoyable one to browse. Each page, or sometimes two pages, features someone's last words with some acompanying comments for context. Some are humorous ("Die? I should say not, dear fellow. No Barrymore would allow such a conventional thing to happen to him.") but most are poignant, some acutely so (Beethovan raging at God during a thunderstorm: "I shall hear in heaven!")

[Chris Cutler · Rating 3 out of 5]

A great collection of quotes that range from inspiring to depressing, from funny to emotional. I won't try to list favorites.
I agree with other reviewers that the book could have been longer. The memorable quotes and brief life sketches made me want to go find a biography to learn more about the man or woman whose last words I had just read.

[Drucilla · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great little book. The way it's set up makes it look clean and easy to read. I like that it gives a short history (paragraph) of the person in question. In some instances, he describes how they die and in others, he doesn't. I wish they would have been uniformed in their information and I wish they had been an index so that you could look up people with ease. But, overall, I enjoyed it.

[Dorothy Mahoney · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Get my swan costume ready." Anna Pavlova
A quick read from many greats. Robinson's compilation includes an explanation for each entry.
His introduction contains the mysterious contents of his father's Midtown office safe after his death (an empty coke bottle, a pair of long underwear , and a scrawled stanza of poetry).

[Andy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fairly simply a collection of famous last words supplemented with some brief facts around the person involved. There's very little to this tiny little hardback but it's diverting toilet reading if you can find it cheap. Not sure I'd bother buying it at full price though as it's rather brief.

[Jamie F · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting... some good quotes...

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great fast read with a wide variety of last words, from touching to appalling. Warning: I’ve been dreaming about death since reading this book.

[Christine]

Morbidly amusing.

[Pamela · Rating 4 out of 5]

The edition is very cute. And I loved the fact that it explains the context of the quotes, which is something that other books on the subject lack.

[Jacqueline · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best thing I ever read on the .... oh excuse me, I forgot to shut the door....

[Patti · Rating 5 out of 5]

This small book packs a lot of historical trivia into its pages. It offers fascinating snippets of the last moments of Kings, singers, statesman, authors, poets and Queens.

[R.K. Cowles · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 1/2 stars

[Diana Petty-stone · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an interesting little book! The title says it all.

[Jody · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting, entertaining read.