You might think that all the famous people's last words I know went into Looking for Alaska. But you'd be vastly underestimating my dorkiness. In point of fact, many of my favorite famous last words didn't appear in the book at all, so instead they're going to appear here.

If you also happen to be a last words dork, the best book about last words is Laura Ward's Famous Last Words, which was published just after Looking for Alaska was finished. That's unfortunate, because it would have come in handy. And the best web site (other than this one, I mean) comes from, of all places, Geocities. This site is a really well-annotated collection of dying declarations, although occasionally they are wrong. (Like, for instance, I'm pretty sure they're wrong about William McKinley.)

Occasionally someone will accuse me of making up the last words in the book, which I did not do, and here is proof in the form of source notes:

Robert E. Lee
With regard to quotations and also with regard to pears, there's one name you can always trust: Bartlett. Lee's last words are in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations.

Meriwether Lewis
I came across these randomly in the book Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide, by Kay Redfield Jameson. Incidentally, it's an excellent book. (p.224.)

Millard Filmore
I'm a big fan of Cecil Adams, who writes the extremely funny "Straight Dope" column in newspapers worldwide. The Straight Dope also comes in book form, where Filmore's last words appear on p.108.

Ulysses S Grant
That riveting tome that is Presidential Trivia (look for Grant's last words on p.151).

William McKinley
Now, admittedly, McKinley's last words are usually recorded as "His will not ours be done," but A. those are lame, and B. many sources agree with me, including Paul Boller's Presidential Anecdotes.

Che Guevera
You can find these in all kinds of books about Che, including Che: A Revolutionary Life.

John Sedgwick
Possibly the last words I've seen in the most places, at least for a person who wasn't famous except insofar as he died famously. Among many many others: Death: The Great Mystery of Life, by Herbie Brennan, p.40.

Henry Ward Beecher
Bartlett!

Dylan Thomas
All over the place (even though they might not have been his last words, just the last anyone ever heard him say). I mean, they're so famous that some guy wrote a book called "Eighteen Straight Whiskeys."

Eugene O'Neill
B-B-B-B-BARTLETT!

Thomas Edison
This quote is cited in a ton of those gooey spiritual self-help books. But anyway, I first came across it in James D. Newton's Uncommon Friends (p.32).

Albert Sidney Johnston
This is all over the web and civil war histories, but you know you can trust it because it appears in Shelby Foote's sprawling and brilliant 3-volume history of the Civil War. I suspect it is in either Volume 1 or 2, since I never read Volume 3 (from what I've heard, however, the South loses).

Edgar Allen Poe
I found these out through googling, but then later, I confirmed them in The Complete Poetry of Edgar Allen Poe. I have to coness: I didn't read the complete poetry of Edgar Allen Poe. I read only the introduction, which is where his last words are found.

Grover Cleveland
The aforementioned Ernie Couch's Presidential Trivia, p.161.

James Dean
All over the web, notable at the always well-sourced and generally awesome anecdotage.com.

Princess Di
I read these in the newspaper after she died.

Other quotes in the book:

Auden's "You shall love your crooked neighbor / With your crooked heart" is from the second-to-last stanza of "As I Walked Out One Evening," which was published in 1937 and can now be read in Auden's Collected Poems.

Forgive me for not including the diacritics, but Gabriel Garcia Marquez's The General in His Labyrinth was first published in English by Knopf in 1990.

The Words: "By the immortal God, I will not move!"
Grade: B
The Story: Now that there's a book all about me, I've been thinking a lot about the death of Thomas Love Peacock, a 19th century writer who was among the most noted Peacocks of his time. Thomas died in his beloved library during a fire in 1866. He was trying to save his books, and when the flames crept in so close that it became clear his library was toast, Peacock decided to go down with them, shouting, "By the immortal God, I will not move!" A nice sentiment. But jeez. Let the books go, idiot.

Also, I was trying to think of a way to make a Clue joke, like, "Mr. Peacock in the Library with the Fiery Flames of Hell," but then I remembered that Clue's Peacock is a Mrs.

George Washington
The Words: "'Tis well."
Grade: C-
The Story: A lot of times when people are dying, they'll say something good, and then they'll go and say something stupid like "'tis well." A few minutes before the 'tis well business, Washington said, "I die hard, but I am not afraid to go." That would have been perfectly fine, George! Why'd you keep chattering?

John Adams
The Words: "Thomas Jefferson still survives."
Grade: A
The Story: These are great last words because Thomas Jefferson didn't still survive. He'd died earlier that very day (July 4, 1826).

Thomas Jeffersn
The Words: "Is it the fourth?"
Grade: A
The Story: Presumably, Jefferson wanted to make sure he was dying on the anniversary of the country he'd helped to create. But sometimes I wonder whether maybe he was just trying to figure out if he had a dentist's appointment that day. Like, maybe his final thought was, "Oh crap. It's July 4th? I've got to get my gums leeched today." Fortunately, he kept quiet.

James Madison
The Words: Either "I always talk better lying down," or, "Nothing more than a change of mind, my dear."
Grade: Either C or A-
The Story: Well, if his last words were, "I always talk better lying down," the story seems to me pretty obvious (he was tired, see), but the second (and better) story goes that Madison's wife asked him if anything was wrong. He replied, "Nothing more than a change of mind, my dear," and while Madison undoubtedly meant that he was fine, there's something sort of beautiful about imagining death as nothing more (and nothing less) than a change of mind.

James Monroe
The Words: None
The Grade: Automatic F
The Story: Monroe died of old age/heart failure/missing his wife in 1831, and no one knows his last words. Well, unless you do, in which case you should definitely email me: pudgehalter [at] yahoo.com