Ambiguous Ending Quotes

L'Avventura,' Dad said, 'has the sort of ellipsis ending most American audiences would rather undergo a root canal than be left with, not only because they loathe anything left to the imagination-we're talking about the country that invented spandex-but also because they are a confident, self-assured nation. They know Family. They know Right from Wrong. They know God-many of them attest to daily chats with the man. And the idea that none of us can truly know anything at all-not the lives of our friends or family, not even ourselves-is a thought they'd rather be shot in the arm with their own semi-automatic rifle than face head-on. Personally, I think there's something terrific about not knowing, relinquishing man's feeble attempt to control. When you throw up your hands, say, "Who knows?" you can get on with the sheer gift of being alive. ~ Marisha Pessl

It's interesting that so many books now are published as the first in a series. It never occurred to me. Although 'The Giver' does have an ambiguous ending. I've heard about that from readers over the years. ~ Lois Lowry

The challenge of ending displacement is inseparable from the challenge of establishing and maintaining peace. When wars end, farmers return to their fields; children return to school; violence against women declines; trade and economic activity resume; medical and other services become more accessible, and the international focus changes from relief to development and self-sufficiency. All this makes new wars less likely. It is a virtuous cycle that deserves nurture and support. ~ Kenneth Bacon

I wished that, for once, faery tales – real faery tales, not Disney fairy tales – would have a happy ending. ~ Julie Kagawa

Would I want to know the ending to my own story? No. I want the adventure that comes with finding out. ~ Heather Vogel Frederick

Drowning,
Drowning on the land,
Drowning,
It doesn't end. ~ C.G. Visser

How can anyone maintain their sanity when everything you read, see, and hear is designed to make you stop whatever you're doing and consume because the world is supposedly ending? ~ Ryan Holiday

I'll answer that.' He took a deep breath, and I could see his eyes searching mine, like he was looking for an answer. 'I had thought that was the ending,' he finally said. 'But I might have been wrong.'
'I was just thinking,' I said, sure that the rest of the crowd could probably hear how hard my heart was beating, since it seemed deafening to me, pounding in my ears, 'that maybe Marjorie realized she was in love with Karl. And told him that. And said she was sorry for being scared. ~ Morgan Matson

A half-century later, Mark Twain would say that the gold rush drastically changed the American character, ending the tradition of patient apprenticeships, the gradual mastery of self, talent, and money. Gold created the get-rich-quick mentality that has been with us ever since, most recently during the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s. ~ Pete Hamill

The ghoul cracked a smile like a coffin's lid sliding ajar. "I'm glad you found me, too," he said. "It will be my honour to tell your story. It has been vastly entertaining thus far. I do hope it has a happy ending, though."
"It won't," Matrick murmured.
"It will," Gabe assured them.
"It might," Clay said. ~ Nicholas Eames

Life doesn't begin with New Year nor does ends with it; it doesn't even stop when you lose someone you couldn't stay without. Life simply doesn't end or begin. Life is a going on. You Still Breathe, You Still Care, and You Still Live. ~ Arpit Vageria

We are but pitiful narrative creatures... obsessing over the agony of not knowing. Sisyphus, Atlas, Echo, all those poor souls, now us. It is the oldest story of them all; never-ending pain. ~ Max Porter

The physical universe was a language with a perfectly ambiguous grammar. Every physical event was an utterance that could be parsed in two entirely different ways, one casual and the other teleological, both valid, neither one disqualifiable no matter how much context was available. ~ Ted Chiang

You tell them what a happy ending consists of, which is always individual success. You tell them that nothing irrational exists in this world, which is a lie. You tell them that conflict only exists only to be neatly resolved, and that everyone who is poor wants to be rich, and everyone who is ill wants to get better, and everyone who gets involved in crime comes to a bad end, and that love should be pure. You tell them that despite all this they are special, that the world revolves around them ... ~ Scarlett Thomas

To my surprise, the sensation of query filled my stomach, spreading through to every corner. This was followed by each point of query ending at the same answer. Device Nineteen had responded to the question by coming to the conclusion that oblivion was the end of every path.
Great. My roommate's an emo.>
My stomach reviewed the comment and rumbled queries to various parts of the diamond, but most were returned unanswered because the required systems were not yet online. ~ J. Cameron McClain

Why should anyone - the state, the medical profession, or anyone else - presume to tell someone else how much suffering they must endure as their life is ending? ~ Marcia Angell

I think probably - I think, you know, when you're first dating somebody, if they're just not that physical with you, if they don't want to make concrete plans with you, you know, if they're sort of ambiguous about where everything is going, I think that's a pretty good sign that they're not into you. ~ Greg Behrendt

Altruism is for those who can't endure their desires. There's a world as ambiguous as a moan, a pleasure moan our earnest neighbors might think a crime. It's where we could live. I'll say I love you, Which will lead, of course, to disappointment, but those words unsaid poison every next moment. I will try to disappoint you better than anyone else has.
Mon Semblable ~ Stephen Dunn

The West Sister Dating Rules were clear on the matter of apologies. On the evolutionary scale of dating, a guy who apologized solely for the sake of ending the argument and getting back into your good graces was on the level of primeval slime - especially if he was clearly doing so merely because he was hoping for sex. The proper response was to unveil the offender's deceit by demanding he explain what exactly he was apologizing for, and then scorn him when he betrayed his ignorance. ~ Alex Gabriel

With us, there were always too many false starts. I believe that what's meant to be usually has a way of working out... and with us, it never did. Call it timing, call it fate, call it what you want. It is what it is. Sometimes in the end, the girl doesn't always get the boy--and that's ok. Life goes on. You know better than anyone that some love stories never get their happy ending... but it doesn't make them any less of a love story though, does it? It doesn't make the love the two shared any less relevant. ~ Britney King

Discovering the 'impossible' ending to a new book makes me sick with joy and relief. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

When a third wave of poverty overwhelmed me, I knew with even greater certitude than when I had lived in Clerkenwell that the only complete solution to my problem was suicide. I never brought it off. I was afraid. A lifetime of never making positive decisions, accepting instead the lesser of the evils presented to me, had atrophied my will. It was not so much that I longed for death as that I didn't long for life. Emptiness, though, was not a sufficiently definite feeling to lead to a violent act. Instead of sitting in my room and balancing the relative convenience of various ways of ending it all, I ought to have been busy trying to summon up a reasonable amount of despair. Hopelessness was thinly spread like drizzle over my whole outlook. But, in an emergency, I could not find a puddle of despondency deep enough to drown in. ~ Quentin Crisp

Do you ever think it's the dead that have the happy ending? Just they don't have to worry about surviving."
"But they're dead," he says
"Yeah. That means they don't have to remember anything."
Elias shakes his head. "That means they can't ever love."
I snort. "So they don't know loss. ~ Carrie Ryan

The van stops on the coast road.

Ho-ho, Cornelius says.

Cornelius? Please. Let's just get to the fucking island.

Patience a small while.

Cornelius kills the engine. He climbs from the van. The wind comes harder now from the sea. He gestures for John to follow; he does. They walk the scalp of a hill together, descending.

You're not to be afraid, John.

They approach a great fall-away to the sea; far below, it flashes its green teeth, the ever-welcoming sea.

Right, Cornelius says.

He steps up to the edge; the fall is sheer - it's a great distance to fall and to a certain ending there.

Come on, John.

He steps with Cornelius to the edge of the sheer fall; the wind pulses hard against them.

Lean into it, Cornelius says. Like so.

He does and he is held there.

Fucking hell. . .

Be fierce, John.

The wind comes hard and Cornelius leans in closer again to its great force; he is held there.

Cornelius?

Now, John.

John tips his toes up close to the edge and closer again to the sheer fall and closer.

Cornelius?

Go on.

He leans over the edge and the wind holds him perfectly there.

Do you see, John?

Maybe.

Do you see the trick of it, John?

I think so.

No fear. ~ Kevin Barry

The ending of your story all depends on the beginning of ours. ~ Piper Payne

A wise person knows when and how to make the exception to every rule. A wise person knows how to improvise. Real-world problems are often ambiguous and ill-defined and the context is always changing. A wise person is like a jazz musician -- using the notes on the page, but dancing around them, inventing combinations that are appropriate for the situation and the people at hand. ~ Barry Schwarz

This final sprint of Breaking Bad is like nothing I've ever seen. It's TV as a crescendo, as a magnet, as a wave. These episodes aren't ending so much as they're gasping for breath. ~ Andy Greenwald

Maggie Young
The beginning and ending of my entire fucking world. ~ A. Meredith Walters

I also felt that Ron and Hermione would have gotten divorced. I'm sorry, I just do. The end of Harry Potter did feel ultimately to me ... just the fact everybody had married everybody. The books were so real and so grounded in what things are really like when you're that age, she nailed that so beautifully. And then there was this slightly fantastical ending. I know that was there for her to say, 'Really, I mean it, no more books,' but you do sort of go, people who were in a war are different from people who haven't been, and how does it affect them? But am I going to second-guess my favorite writer? I think not. ~ Joss Whedon

Indira Gandhi had been this very powerful, dominating, ambiguous mother figure. Ambiguous because she was tyrannical, she had imposed ... she had suspended Indian democracy for a few years but she also was the woman who had defeated Pakistan in war at a time when most male politicians in India had secretly feared fighting that war, so that here in India even today Indira Gandhi is called by Indian nationalists the only man ever to have governed India. ~ Aravind Adiga

Restoring order of my personal universe suddenly seemed imperative, as I refolded my T-shirts, stuffed the toes of my shoes with tissue paper, and arranged all the bills in my secret stash box facing the same way, instead of tossed in sloppy and wild, as if by my evil twin. All week, I kept making lists and crossing things off them, ending each day with a sense of great accomplishment eclipsed only by complete and total exhaustion. ~ Sarah Dessen

It must seem like the world is ending, but wait and see what God will do. He must have something wonderful in mind. ~ Rachel Hauck

We had not mentioned love, but my every nerve ending throbbed with it, and I carried it in a cloud around me, like sea mist. ~ Jojo Moyes

The utility, or intrinsic value of gold as a commodity is now considerably less than in the past; its monetary status has become extraordinarily ambiguous; and its future is highly uncertain. ~ Benjamin Graham

Only now I have added "living green" to the list. And that's when I realize: there is no ending to the story. There is no "I lost my 70 pounds and my house is completely green."

It's an ongoing process. There is no end game.

It's like success. You think that at some point you make it and then it's easy. Nope. The hard work never goes away. In some ways it's harder. No coasting. ~ Jeff Garlin

Still, I've heard it said that all stories are basically love stories, and
my story is no exception. This is a love story, too. And, like a lot of
love stories, it doesn't have a happy ending. ~ O.J. Simpson

The Pakistani film International Gorillay (International guerillas), produced by Sajjad Gul, told the story of a group of local heroes - of the type that would, in the language of a later age, come to be known as jihadis, or terrorists - who vowed to find and kill an author called "Salman Rushdie" . The quest for "Rushdie" formed the main action of the film and "his" death was the film's version of happy ending.

"Rushdie" himself was depicted as a drunk, constantly swigging from a bottle, and a sadist. He lived in what looked very like a palace on what looked very like an island in the Philippines (clearly all novelists had second homes of this kind), being protected by what looked very like the Israeli Army (this presumably being a service offered by Israel to all novelists), and he was plotting the overthrow of Pakistan by the fiendish means of opening chains of discotheques and gambling dens across that pure and virtuous land, a perfidious notion for which, as the British Muslim "leader" Iqbal Sacranie might have said, death was too light a punishment. "Rushdie" was dressed exclusively in a series of hideously coloured safari suits - vermilion safari suits, aubergine safari suits, cerise safari suits - and the camera, whenever it fell upon the figure of this vile personage, invariably started at his feet and then panned [sic] with slow menace up to his face. So the safari suits got a lot of screen time, and when he saw a videotape of the film the fashion insult ~ Salman Rushdie

Proverb: The caterpillar thought the world was ending, then it turned into a butterfly, ~ Marian Phair

To understand oneself requires patience, tolerant awareness; the self is a book of many volumes which you cannot read in a day, but when once you begin to read, you must read every word, every sentence, every paragraph for in them are the intimations of the whole. The beginning of it is the ending of it. If you know how to read, supreme wisdom is to be found. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

To Fred, those years seemed to pass like quickly skimming a book and then finding the ending wasn't what he expected. He wished he'd paid more attention to the story. ~ Sarah Addison Allen

They were fed and clothed and taken care of until they were too old, and then they were kicked out. This ending was no deterrent. No one who is young is ever going to be old. Now ~ John Steinbeck

The body protects itself, and the same happens in the mind. It occurs sluggishly and imperfectly, a bad job done by indifferent craftsmen, but within minutes an accretion of defence mechanisms starts to form around the trauma, blunting its edges, eventually sealing it away inside scar tissue. Like a sliver of glass buried deep in a cut, the event will never go away, and often a movement will cause it to nudge a nerve ending and burn like fire for a while. However much it hurts when that happens, the last thing you want. ~ Michael Marshall

For all their faults. I am passing out. O bitter ending! I'll slip away before they're up. They'll never see. Nor know. Nor miss me. ~ James Joyce

Anime is intended to have ambiguous features. That's part of the art form. ~ M. Night Shyamalan