What's the saddest part of any book you've ever read?

Question

Please quote the exact words if you've got the book.

Write the saddest part of any book you've ever read.

Here's me:

The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak.

Pg. 535 - 536

There were shocked pajamas and torn faces. It was the boy's hair she saw first.

Rudy?

She did more than mouth the word now. "Rudy?"

He lay with yellow hair and closed eyes, and the book thief ran toward him and fell down. She dropped the black book. "Rudy," she sobbed, "wake up...." She grabbed him by the shirt and gave him just the slightest disbelieving shake. "Wake up, Rudy," and now, as the sky went on heating and showering ash, Liesel was holding Rudy Steiner's shirt by the front. "Rudy, please." The tears grappled with her face. "Rudy, please, wake up, Goddamn it, wake up, I love you. Come on, Rudy, come on, Jesse Owens, don't you know I love you, wake up, wake up, wake up...."

But nothing cared.

The rubble just climbed higher. Concrete hills with caps of red. A beautiful tear-stomped girl, shaking the dead.

"Come on, Jesse Owens-"

But the boy did not wake.

In disbelief, Liesel buried her head into Rudy's chest. She held his limp body, trying to keep him from lolling back, until she needed to return him to the butchered ground. She did it gently.

Slow. Slow.

"God, Rudy..."

She leaned down and looked at his lifeless face and Liesel kissed her best friend, Rudy Steiner, soft and true on his lips. He tasted dusty and sweet. He tasted like regret in the shadows of trees and in the glow of the anatchist's suit collection. She kissed him long and soft, and when she pulled herself away, she touched his mouth with her fingers. Her hands were trembling, her lips were fleshy, and she leaned in once more, this time losing control and misjudging it. Their teeth collided on the demolished world of Himmel Street.

Answer 1

I couldn't say definitively if it's the *very* saddest, but this passage from "The Virgin Suicides" by Jeffrey Eugenides never fails to get me choked up:

"It didn't matter in the end how old they had been, or that they were girls, but only that we had loved them, and that they hadn't heard us calling, still do not hear us, up here in the tree house, with our thinning hair and soft bellies, calling them out of those rooms where they went to be alone for all time, alone in suicide, which is deeper than death, and where we will never find the pieces to put them back together."

Answer 2

Before I Die by Jenny Downham

Right near the end when Tess is dying, it is so beautiful and just descibed how I have seen my patients die from cancer or life ending diseases.

You have to read it to appreciate it!

Answer 3

Many many books have very sad passages, but the one that comes to mind is when Black Beauty was working in the coal mines.

Answer 4

I believe the book is called "Where the red fern grows" The boy has 2 dogs, and when the one dies, its quite heartbreaking because then the other dog is depressed and wont eat or anything. This book really got to me emotionally  

Answer 5

The entire book Night (by Elie Wiesel) was sad, and was true. It made me cry, and I do not cry easily.

Answer 6

The part in Phantom of the Opera, where Christine goes of with Raoul and leaves Phantom sobbing. Then the part where he dies. Sooo sad.

Answer 7

When Dumbledore dies in Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince.

Also I love the part when Harry tell's Dumbledore he'll be alright and Dumbledore says something like, "I'm not scared Harry, I'm with you"

Oh its so sad how they had a great relationship and then Dumbledore dies.  Saddest book EVER!

Answer 8

New Moon, by Stephenie Meyer

When Edward tells Bella that he is leaving her.  I started crying like a baby when he said "it will be as if I never exsisted."

God, that book is so depressing.