Best Ending Ever Quotes

A few weeks ago I had a dream. I dreamed I was back at the house, in the red room, reading my microeconomics textbook. Maddy outside playing with Hope, and Agnes was preparing dinner. It was just like old times. I was elated. I knew all along that they weren't really dead. It was all just a terrible mistake. Maddy joined me in the library. Strangely, she didn't smell like anything. Not her usual crème brulee or green apples or candy. That's when I realized she was dead, though I didn't know I was dreaming. She apologized for everything and then proceeded to explain why things had turned out the way they had. Her story made complete sense. It was what I needed to hear. Finally I had an answer. Finally I could let go. And then she vanished
When I woke up, in a pool of sweat, I couldn't remember a thing Maddy had said. ~ Katherine Easer

The best ending ever, for a science fiction book - or any novel, now that I think about it - was in Rendezvous With Rama. You know that you're at the end of the book and yet, there is no resolution. Then he hits you with those last six words. Better yet, the power is in the very last word. Wow! ~ John Gaver

Best to let the broken glass be broken glass, let it splinter into smaller pieces and dust and scatter. Let the cracks between things widen until they are no longer cracks but the new places for things. That was where they were now. The world wasn't ending: it had ended and now they were in the new place. They could not recognize it because they had never seen it before. ~ Colson Whitehead

There is always more after the ending. Always the next morning, and the next. Always changes, losses and gains. Always one step after the other. Until the one true ending that none of us can escape. But even that ending is only a small one, larges as it looms for us. There is still the next morning for everyone else. For the vast majority of the rest of the universe that ending might as well not ever have happened. Every ending is an arbitrary one. Everything ending is from another angle, not really an ending. ~ Ann Leckie

True love never lives happily ever after - true love has no ending. ~ K. Knight

But my mother's life was a never-ending round of maintenance. Not one single thing did she ever achieve but that it had to be done all over again, one day or one week or one season later. Oh, the monotony. ~ Jacqueline Kelly

So completely stunned by the force of that smile, Sam found himself helpless to do anything but watch as she quickly closed the gap between them. Her hands reached up to grasp his chin, and he bent down to her, not really knowing why he did it. It was like gravity, so natural that the compulsion was inescapable. Her heels helped.
When
she kissed him, every nerve ending in his body exploded into his awareness.
No girl had ever kissed him like that. Hell, no girl had ever kissed any guy like that, at least not that Sam had heard. ~ Isobel Irons

Time is the best author. It always writes the perfect ending. ~ Charlie Chaplin

I had come suddenly to pity them, for I understood how innocent and natural it was for them to behave abominably, and with such abominable results. They were doing their best to live like people invented in story books. This was the reason Americans shot each other so often: It was a convenient literary device for ending short stories and books. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Even the novice alone can see quickly that a life conducted, temporarily or no, as a simple renunciation of value becomes at best something occluded and at worst something empty: a life of waiting for the will-be-never. Sitting in passive acceptance of (not judgment on) the happening and ending of things. ~ David Foster Wallace

Maybe the ending was the best part - the only time you saw the beauty in it all. ~ Megan Abbott

You have considerable choice in how you end your fiction. For all stories, the basic rule is the same: Choose the type of ending that best suits what's gone before. ~ Nancy Kress

I'm not going anywhere, dear heart. I have a happy ending to write with you." Addie stiffened. "You heard that?" she muttered against his chest. Gideon chuckled, his joy too large to contain. He pulled back just enough to see her face. "Yes, I did, my little dreamer. And I plan to fulfill that duty to the best of my ability. ~ Karen Witemeyer

when summer was still a word plump and generous and there was actual sunshine and time was impossibly deliciously luxuriously long and the idea of summer stretched out ahead so that now as you entered it you could not imagine it ever ending. ~ Niall Williams

We've been conditioned to believe that things always have a way of working themselves out and that happily ever after is within our reach, if we just work hard enough. The truth is that none of us are immune to tragedy. No matter how hard you work, no matter how good you are, life isn't obligated to give you a fairy-tale ending. ~ Anonymous

Be honest with yourself. You were at your lowest and broken down. You were unsure and lost hope. You were hiding your fears until you showed them on your sleeve. You felt like everything and everyone was the hammer and you were the nail as they were beating down on you, and it was never-ending. Their empty threats had you scared and you were always running because your weakness was exposed. You were their prey. You didn't know who to believe because of their mixed signals.
You might not see it now, but you are stronger than you can ever imagine.
You cannot become comfortable in your pain. You have to let the pain that you feel turn you into a rose without thorns. There are sixteen pieces on the chessboard. The king is the most important piece, but the difference is that the queen is the most powerful piece!
You are a queen, you can maneuver around your opponents; they do not have the power over your life, your mind or soul. You might think you've been a prisoner, but that is your past'. Look in the now and work your way to how you want your future to be. Exercise your thoughts into a pattern of letting go, and think positively about more of what you want than what you do not want.
Queen!
You are a queen! As a matter of fact, you are the queen! Act as if you know it!
You are powerful, determined, strong, and you can make the biggest and most extravagant move and put it into action.
Lights, camera, strike a pose and own it!
It is yours to ~ Charlena E. Jackson

The medals no-one will ever wear should be the ones that reflect the most. It's not an ending, it's not a period at the end of their lives, it's a semicolon. The story will continue to be told. ~ Jim Sheeler

I'm a sliver-thin light, diamond sharp, that can slip through gaps in the world we know. I will come into your dreams and speak soft words when you think of me. There is no happy ever after - but there is an afterwards.
This isn't our ending. ~ Rosamund Lupton

Well, history isn't ever going to end, happily or unhappily. And history is ending every second - happily for some of us, unhappily for others, happily one second, unhappily the next. History is always ending and always not ending, and both ways there is nothing to wait for ~ Tom Robbins

to Russell Vernon Hunter

New York
Spring 1932

My dear Vernon Hunter

Your letter gives me such a vivid picture of some thing I love in space - love almost as passionately as I can love a person - that I am almost tempted to pack my little bag and go - but I will not go to it right this morning - No matter how much I love it - There is some thing in me that must finish jobs once started - when I can - .

So I am here - and what you write of me is there

The cockscomb is here too - I put it in much cold water and it came to life from a kind of flatness it had in the box when I opened it - tho it was very beautiful as it lay in the box a bit wilted when I opened it - . I love it - Thank you.

I must confess to you - that I even have the desire to go into old Mexico - that I would have gone - undoubtedly - if it were only myself that I considered - You are wise - so wise - in staying in your own country that you know and love - I am divided between my man and a life with him - and some thing of the outdoors - of your world - that is in my blood - and that I know I will never get rid of - I have to get along with my divided self the best way I can - .

So give my greetings to the sun and the sky - and the wind - and the dry never ending land

- Sincerely

Georgia O'Keeffe ~ Georgia O'Keeffe

Majesty,
A frozen swamp. Icicles on branches and uprooted trees. That was our crystal palace, once upon a time. I was your king and you were my queen. I promised you I'd always try to give you your desires. I meant that. And since you wanted Derek, I tried to get him for you. I tried to get Derek to see how beautiful, sweet and amazing you are, in spite of myself, in spite of my rending heart. He never saw you the way I did, and you never saw me at all. I thought maybe if I found love with someone else, I'd be rid of my feelings for you, but that empty relationship only made me long for you more. I've offered you the most support and devotion a person can give an unwanting heart, but all I get in return are your mocking advances, which blatantly scream and reiterate the fact that you'll never love me. It's been so excruciating to be around you lately. You're always teasing me, and it kills me. That's why I've been so irritable and angry. It's inconceivable to me how you could think I'd EVER hurt you, when all I've been living for is to try and make you happy. Well, I'm done. Your doubt has caused me more pain than anything I've ever known. I always thought we'd be life-long friends, but this fairytale has no happy ending. The crystal has shattered. I can't be your king anymore. Then again, I never really was. I've always been the lowly jester. And everyone knows a fool can never be with a queen.

Goodbye, Alec ~ Courtney Vail

Closing The Cycle

One always has to know when a stage comes to an end. If we insist on staying longer than the necessary time, we lose the happiness and the meaning of the other stages we have to go through. Closing cycles, shutting doors, ending chapters - whatever name we give it, what matters is to leave in the past the moments of life that have finished.

Did you lose your job? Has a loving relationship come to an end? Did you leave your parents' house? Gone to live abroad? Has a long-lasting friendship ended all of a sudden?

You can spend a long time wondering why this has happened. You can tell yourself you won't take another step until you find out why certain things that were so important and so solid in your life have turned into dust, just like that. But such an attitude will be awfully stressing for everyone involved: your parents, your husband or wife, your friends, your children, your sister, everyone will be finishing chapters, turning over new leaves, getting on with life, and they will all feel bad seeing you at a standstill.

None of us can be in the present and the past at the same time, not even when we try to understand the things that happen to us. What has passed will not return: we cannot for ever be children, late adolescents, sons that feel guilt or rancor towards our parents, lovers who day and night relive an affair with someone who has gone away and has not the least intention of coming back.

Thi ~ Paulo Coelho

There are two basic defenses for an open ending: one is, If you read carefully enough, you'll know what happened. And the other is, That's how life is: things don't come to neat endings, there isn't a "happily ever after." But if you take that second line of defense, then I think you have to make the point that the writer has shown the range of possibility. ~ Lorin Stein

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

Last year I had a very unusual experience. I was awake, with my eyes closed, when I had a dream. It was a small dream about time. I was dead, I guess, in deep black space high up among many white stars. My own consciousness had been disclosed to me, and I was happy. Then I saw far below me a long, curved band of color. As I came closer, I saw that it stretched endlessly in either direction, and I understood that I was seeing all the time of the planet where I had lived.

It looked like a woman's tweed scarf; the longer I studied any one spot, the more dots of color I saw. There was no end to the deepness and variety of the dots. At length, I started to look for my time, but, although more and more specks of color and deeper and more intricate textures appeared in the fabric, I couldn't find my time, or any time at all that I recognized as being near my time. I couldn't make out so much as a pyramid. Yet as I looked at the band of time, all the individual people, I understood with special clarity, were living at the very moment with great emotion, in intricate detail, in their individual times and places, and they were dying and being replaced by ever more people, one by one, like stitches in which whole worlds of feeling and energy were wrapped, in a never-ending cloth. I remembered suddenly the color and texture of our life as we knew it- these things had been utterly forgotten- and I thought as I searched for it on the limitless band, "that was a good time then, ~ Annie Dillard

There is one final point, the point that separates a true multivolume work from a short story, a novel, or a series. The ending of the final volume should leave the reader with the feeling that he has gone through the defining circumstances of Main Character's life. The leading character in a series can wander off into another book and a new adventure better even than this one. Main Character cannot, at the end of your multivolume work. (Or at least, it should seem so.) His life may continue, and in most cases it will. He may or may not live happily ever after. But the problems he will face in the future will not be as important to him or to us, nor the summers as golden. ~ Gene Wolfe

Around the time my first marriage of twenty-one years was ending, I had spent a lot of time reflecting on the fairytale promises of living "happily ever after and being "forever in love." I thought about how the expectations of our families, friends, religion and society each contribute to the guilt and shame many of us experience when our partnerships and marriages do not work out the way we expected. The familiar promises of being together until death do us part" seemed antiquated and misguided in our modern world. Why wan't being happy, in love and committed 'for now' a more widely accepted and reasonable vision? ~ Theresa J. Knight

Fear was a poison. Fear was a prison. Fear was the bridesmaid of regret, the butcher of amibition. The bleak forever between forward and backward. Fear was can't. Fear was won't.

But fear wasn't ever a choice.

To never fear was to never hope, never love, never live. To never fear the dark was to never smile as the dawn kissed your face. To never fear solitude was to never know the joy of a beauty in your arms. Part of having is the fear of losing. Part of creating is the fear of it breaking. Part of beginning is the fear of your ending.

Fear is never a choice. ~ Jay Kristoff

Ending a relationship doesn't end the love that was shared. Love doesn't ever die, it just morphs. Love is eternal. Allowing love to move freely rather than try to force it to be something it's not is the only way to find peace. Gratitude is the first step to happiness and peace. Accepting someone is not what you wanted them to be doesn't make anyone "bad" or "wrong." That's love. Accepting the whole. Letting go out of love takes courage. Staying safe is of the ego. Entrapment is of the ego. And fear. And letting go simply means allowing everyone to be who they are and to live the life they came here to live. ~ Camille Lucy

Some days I'm sure I'll be unravelled,
That I'm just a piece of thread,
Woven from everything I've heard
And every book I've ever read.
That someone will find my ending
Or a spot where I've worn thin,
And they'll pull me right apart
Back to the place where I begin,
Until they've found that every fibre
Isn't one to call my own,
Its from the thoughts and works of others
Thats I've been so crudely sewn.
And there's nothing I can make
Or think or do or be or say,
That isn't someone else
Woven in just a different way.
Then once I come undone,
Once who I thought I was grows small,
What if I look at all that's left
And there is nothing there at all? ~ Emily Hanson

Of all the universal lies she accepted unquestioningly, the happy ending was the most absurd. The hero and heroine lived happily ever after, and the ending seemed indisputable, definitive. No questions asked about how long love or happiness lasts in that 'forever' that can be divided into lifetimes, years, months. Even days ~ Arturo Perez Reverte

But who ever said everybody gets a happy ending? ~ Robert McCammon

Extreme poverty is the best breeding ground on earth for disease, political instability, and terrorism. ~ Jeffrey Sachs

But here I am at this moment, a thirty-four-year-old geek, and against my will and against my reason (although, okay, not against my character), I still want that fucking Cinderella story for myself.
More than an amazing, no-one-else-on-the-planet-knows-this secret.
More than anything else.
I want that happily-ever-after ending I imagined, as a teen, I'd get someday. That daydream I held on to as my prize for surviving those sucky years of adolescence.
Dammit, I deserve that ending.
It's just that, if I'm truly honest with myself, I can no longer tell if it's Sam, specifically, I want or if it's the nearly two-decade-old fantasy featuring him as the heroic lead.
So, at the last second, I cop out. ~ Marilyn Brant

All that is, was, and will be. Universe much too big to see. Time and space never ending, disturbing thoughts, questions pending. Limitations of human understanding. Too quick to criticize, obligation to survive, we hunger to be alive. All that is, ever, ever was, will be ever twisting, turning, Through The Never. In the dark, see past our eyes. Pursuit of truth, no matter where it lies. Gazing up to the breeze of the heavens, on a quest, meaning, reason. Come to be, how it begun. All alone in the family of the sun, curiosity teasing everyone. On our home, third stone from the sun. ~ James Hetfield

He got up and ran on, pitching himself down the hill, flying through the branches of the firs, leaping roots and rocks without seeing them. As he went, the hill got steeper and steeper, until it was really like falling. He was going too fast and he knew when he came to a stop, it would involve crashing into something, and shattering pain.

Only as he went on, picking up speed all the time, until with each leap he seemed to sail through yards of darkness, he felt a giddy surge of emotion, a sensation that might have been panic but felt strangely like exhilaration. He felt as if at any moment his feet might leave the ground and never come back down. He knew this forest, this darkness, this night. He knew his chances: not good. He knew what was after him. It had been after him all his life. He knew where he was - in a story about to unfold an ending. He knew better than anyone how these stories went, and if anyone could find their way out of these woods, it was him.

("Best New Horror") ~ Joe Hill

O for the night that was ending, for the sleep and the wakefulness, the toughness and tenderness mixed, the sweet temper, the safety in darkness. Would such a night ever return? ~ E.M. Forster

We belong to each other now really and truly, no make-believe. Doesn't it seem queer for me to belong to someone at last? It seems very, very sweet. And I shall never let you be sorry for a single instant.

Yours, for ever and ever,

Judy ~ Jean Webster

They are my men and this ship my responsibility. I vowed no woman would ever alter my path. Yet I kept them from ending you, and it makes me sick to the gut, for I would still rather die myself than see one hair on your head damaged by another man. ~ Saskia Walker

But the reason that writers like Harlan and Lee don't outline is that they enjoy the serendipity, the surprises that arise when they're not constricted by the steel girdle of an outline. And I get that too. Some of the best plot twists in my work have been ones that I didn't plan on, including the ending to PARANOIA. One of the great pleasures of writing fiction is living in the story so that you "experience" it the way your characters do. ~ Joseph Finder

Such growth will move humans into ever-higher energy states, ultimately transforming our bodies into spiritual form and uniting this dimension of existence with the afterlife dimension, ending the cycle of birth and death. ~ James Redfield

As usual, Junko thought about Jack London's 'To Build a Fire.' It was the story of a man traveling alone through the snowy Alaskan interior and his attempts to light a fire. He would freeze to death unless he could make it catch. The sun was going down. Junko hadn't read much fiction, but that one short story she had read again and again, ever since her teacher had assigned it as an essay topic during summer vacation of her first year in high school. The scene of the story would always come vividly to mind as she read. She could feel the man's fear and hope and despair as if they were her own; she could sense the very pounding of his heart as he hovered on the brink of death. Most important of all, though, was the fact that the man was fundamentally longing for death. She knew that for sure. She couldn't explain how she knew, but she knew it from the start. Death was really what he wanted. He knew that it was the right ending for him. And yet he had to go on fighting with all his might. He had to fight against an overwhelming adversary in order to survive. What most shook Junko was this deep-rooted contradiction.
The teacher ridiculed her view. 'Death is really what he wanted? That's a new one for me! And strange! Quite 'original,' I'd have to say.' He read her conclusion aloud before the class, and everybody laughed.
But Junko knew. All of them were wrong. Otherwise how could the ending of the story be so quiet and beautiful? ~ Haruki Murakami

If it was up to me, I'd choose the hard path with the easy ending, not the easy path with the hard end. ~ Kim Harrison

And to a start and to an end, If ever you exist except inside my head, Know that time ceaselessly walks uninvited, Towards an ending for a new beginning of another end… ~ Piyush Rohankar

What did a happy ending even mean in real life, anyway? In stories you simply said, 'They lived happily ever after,' and that was it. But in real life people had to keep on living, day after day, year after year. ~ Scott Westerfeld

If just once you were depressed for no reason, you have been so all your life without knowing it.
Becoming: an agony without an ending.The older I grow, the less I enjoy performing my little Hamlet. The desire to die was my one and only concern; to it I have sacrificed everything, even death. If History had a goal, how lamentable would be the fate of those of us who have accomplished nothing!
On the frontiers of the self: 'What I have suffered, what I am suffering, no one will ever know, not even I'. Events - tumours of time.
Man secretes disaster.
The secret of my adaptation to life? - I've changed despairs the way I've changed shirts. Each day is a Rubicon in which I aspire to be drowned. ~ Emil M. Cioran

Since human beings first began to write, they have recorded their wish for an idealized ending some call the "good death," as if any of us can ever be sure of it or have any reason to expect it. There are pitfalls of decision-making to be sidestepped and varieties of hope to seek, but beyond that we must forgive ourselves when we cannot achieve some preconceived image of dying right. ~ Sherwin B. Nuland