Endings Quotes

We aren't meant to comprehend endings. We aren't meant to understand death. Death's whole gig is not being understood. ~ Taffy Brodesser-Akner

When I was preparing for one term's work in the Botvinnik school I had to spend a lot of time on king and pawn endings. So when I came to a tricky position in my own games I knew the winning method. ~ Garry Kasparov

There is something deep within us that sobs at endings. Why, God, does everything have to end? Why does all nature grow old? Why do spring and summer have to go? ~ Joe L. Wheeler

Whether or not this story has a happy ending depends, of course, on who is reading it. Whether you are a wolf or a girl. ~ Kelly Link

I like stories of adventure. Especially if there's some kind of disaster involved."
The eyebrow remains arched.
I laugh. "I read the ones with happy endings, too."
Josh gestures towards my shelves. "You read a lot."
"Safer than going on a real adventure."
Now he's the one who laughs. "Maybe. ~ Stephanie Perkins

Happy endings must come at the end of something,' the Walrus pointed out. 'If they happen in the middle of a story, or an adventure, or the like, all they do is cheer things up for awhile. ~ Salman Rushdie

I seem to have a talent for writing endings that seem just right to me but that frustrate other people. ~ Jonathan Dee

You were everything, everything that I wanted. We were meant to be, supposed to be, but we lost it. And all of the memories, so close to me, just fade away. All this time you were pretending. So much for my happy ending. ~ Avril Lavigne

I've begun to realize that behind every story there is a gap that nourishes wisdom with great strength. And people misunderstand it as the end. ~ Efrat Cybulkiewicz

Determinism gives you the freedom to do whatever you like. ~ Raheel Farooq

Greek is a wonderfully rich and expressive language, which makes it one of the harder of the European tongues to learn. The active vocabulary is much bigger than other European languages. The constructions and the different endings are not easy to master, especially if you are an English speaker. ~ John Mole

There is no ending to this story because, as I've realised, stories don't have endings, only beginnings. ~ Shirley Marr

If ever there were a true "just as I am" church, if ever there were a community where everybody could bring all their baggage and brokenness with them without neat and tidy happy endings quite yet, if ever there was a group where everyone was loved and no one pretended - we could not make enough room inside the building. ~ John Ortberg

The beginning's easy because it's like
BOOM, some shit just happened. The ending's easy because
POW, all the shit that happened just lead to this. ~ Chuck Wendig

I know all about endings. It is beginnings that elude me. ~ Marion Zimmer Bradley

In Hinduism, Shiva is a deity who represents transformation. Through destruction and restoration, Shiva reminds us that endings are beginnings, and that our world is constantly undergoing a cycle of birth, death and rebirth. ~ Karen Salmansohn

I've burned the bridges and built many walls instead … ~ Samiha Totanji

I thought of happy endings, how novelists usually flinched. To admit your characters are doomed means you are too. ~ Darcey Steinke

'FlashForward' was on the outs when I was approached with 'Happy Endings.' I literally got the script on a Friday, and on Saturday morning I met with David Caspe, Jamie Tarses, and the Russo brothers. I took the role on that Saturday, and on Monday I was doing a table read. It all happened very fast, but it was super exciting. ~ Zachary Knighton

Pawn endings are to Chess what putting is to golf ~ Cecil Purdy

How silly of me to believe in happy endings when I lived and breathed in darkness. ~ Kerri Maniscalco

But as Hegel teaches us, beginnings are necessarily problematic. (As are endings.) How can I describe my first encounter with Ana fairly, when my understanding of her essence has passed through infinite iterations over the past four and a half years? My ~ Alena Graedon

He smells of beginnings. Beginnings set in motion a long time ago and overlooked. Beginnings which no number of endings could bury. ~ Maggie Harcourt

The happy ending is our national belief. ~ Mary McCarthy

The best endings never end; they begin ~ Ela Crain

Together, in that room, our childhood notions of love melted away. We discovered love was not a fairytale. Sometimes there were no happy endings, and when there were, you needed to work like hell to keep the happiness alive. ~ Cristina Marrero

Fortunate people often have very favorable beginnings and very tragic endings. What matters isn't being applauded when you arrive - for that is common - but being missed when you leave. ~ Baltasar Gracian

If he had learned anything in life, it was that there were no happy endings. Life simply went on. ~ Katarina Bivald

An ending is something like a caboose on a train that just pulled out so that there's room for the train that's now arriving. The problem is, we forget that a caboose is only one part of one train. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

I'd love for readers to read what books are about so that if they are expecting happy endings in dark horror novels, they won't reach for the Vallium or something worse! ~ Carole Gill

When I write, I never know the endings. What I think works in [my] stories is the fact that when I write, I really want to find out what is going on-I'm writing for myself as a reader. It's like when you dream a dream. I want to know what's behind the door. If I navigate, it's from a place that's totally intuitive. ~ Etgar Keret

In reality," he told Paulina, after knowing her a short time, "endings are unworthy of art. Works of art are always unfinished. Whoever creates them is never sure of having finished them. The same is true of all the best things in life. Goethe, even though he was a German, was right about this: 'Every beginning is beautiful, but one must stop on the threshold. ~ Angeles Mastretta

Can't say I've ever been too fond of beginnings, myself. Messy little things. Give me a good ending anytime. You know where you are with an ending. ~ Neil Gaiman

The happy ending of the Resurrection is so enormous that it swallows up even the sorrow of the Cross. ~ Timothy Keller

The world began in ending, and it will end in beginning. ~ Jacqueline Carey

Some journeys can only be made once. Some partings aren't what they seem. Some endings must be so something else can begin. ~ R.C. Lewis

If you like books with happy endings then put this book down immediately. ~ Lemony Snicket

Mama said there was always a catastrophe coming. Someone's world was always coming to an end. It wasn't our worry to change every ending, only the endings we could ~ Rob Thurman

The worst isn't done. The worst is just beginning, and there are no happy endings. (Samuel Tarly) ~ George R R Martin

I read because one life isn't enough, and in the page of a book I can be anybody;
I read because the words that build the story become mine, to build my life;
I read not for happy endings but for new beginnings; I'm just beginning myself, and I wouldn't mind a map;
I read because I have friends who don't, and young though they are, they're beginning to run out of material;
I read because every journey begins at the library, and it's time for me to start packing;
I read because one of these days I'm going to get out of this town, and I'm going to go everywhere and meet everybody, and I want to be ready. ~ Richard Peck

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

Sometimes love does not have the most honorable beginnings, and the endings, the endings will break you in half. It's everything in between we live for. - Ann Patchett, from the essay The Sense of an Ending ~ Megan Hart

Same people. Same hellos and goodbyes. Same beginnings and endings. Same befores and afters. ~ Sarah Ockler

She was kind of crying, too, because she liked happy endings. Then she realized it wasn't an ending at all. As she gazed around at all these people she loved, she knew that everybody here was just getting started. ~ Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Maybe happy endings were real, as long as you understood that they weren't endings, but steps on the road. ~ Katharine McGee

In the planning stage of a book, don't plan the ending. It has to be earned by all that will go before it. ~ Rose Tremain

Not all stories have happy endings; but that doesn't mean they're not worth the read. ~ Cassia Leo

It's okay how some stories leave off without an ending. Life doesn't always deliver the one you would expect. ~ Adam Silvera

Real life's nasty. It's cruel. It doesn't care about heroes and happy endings and the way things should be. In real life, bad things happen. People die. Fights are lost. Evil often wins. ~ Darren Shan

Sometimes things end worse for one side than the other. These 'injured parties' always seem to see themselves as victims of a moral outrage. They never feel simply rejected, but also abused. I've known many women who were great believers in the curative powers of indignation. ~ Lionel Shriver

It's stupid to be that way, so easily hurt; it's better to be like a plank of wood, an emotional mule. It's best not to feel, ... best to have your nerve endings cauterized. ~ Sonya Hartnett

Sometimes a soldier returns home and all he can do is share his story in the hopes that somehow, in some way, it helps another soldier make sense of things. And although the stories may not be perfect, sometimes just sharing is enough to make a difference. ~ Michael Anthony

Sweetheart, you have to get some sleep. The doctor said you needed to rest, that your body was still flushing that drug out of your system."
Eli said nothing for a moment. "You called me 'sweetheart.'"
"I did?"
"Did you mean it? Cause here's the thing, sugar. You turned my world upside down. I've never been so scared in my life as when I realized Scarlett Group had taken you. I was afraid I wouldn't have the chance to tell you how much I love you."
"Oh, Eli." Tears filled her eyes. Her handsome Navy SEAL loved her enough that he was laying his heart on the line without having a clue she felt the same way about him.. An act of courage from the man staring at her with a wary gaze.
"We haven't known each other long. If it's too soon for you to know how you feel about me, I'll wait. Just know you own my heart, Brenna. I want to marry you and someday watch you rock my children."
She laid her hand over his mouth, stemming the tidal wave of words. "Eli, you don't have to wait."
"I don't?"
"I'm a romance writer, my love. Happy endings are my stock in trade. Without you in my life, I wouldn't have a happy ending because I love you, too, Eli. And, yes, I will marry you." "Soon?"
"The sooner, the better. ~ Rebecca Deel

The endings for all my characters seem sufficiently human and messy for me to feel comfortable with them. In some ways they have only moved an inch, but sometimes an inch is a great distance. ~ David O. Russell

And then she began to cry, and when I asked her why she was doing that, she said it was because I was to have a happy ending, and it was just like a book; and I wondered what books she'd been reading. ~ Margaret Atwood

Endings and beginnings look just the same. ~ Patricia Robin Woodruff

There are no happy endings.
Endings are the saddest part,
So just give me a happy middle
And a very happy start. ~ Shel Silverstein

Even tiny empires fall. ~ Erin Morgenstern

It's a cruel, ironical art, photography. The dragging of captured moments into the future; moments that should have been allowed to evaporate with the past, should exist only in memories glimpsed through the fog of events that came after. Photography forces us to see people before their future weighed down on them. Before they knew their endings. ~ Kate Morton

An early editor characterized my books as 'romantic comedy for intelligent adults.' I think people see them as funny but kind. I don't set out to write either funny or kind, but it's a voice they like, quirky like me ... And you know, people like happy endings. ~ Elinor Lipman

People cry at weddings for the same reason they cry at happy endings: because they so desperately want to believe in something they know is not credible. ~ Margaret Atwood

Books don't have intermissions either."

"What do they have?"

"Endings. ~ Rainbow Rowell

I ask you again / You who watch / How can there ever be any ending but this? First silence / Then darkness. ~ Ben Power

Yeah, and that alternate universes usually have the worst endings with the unhappiest conclusions. ~ Krista Ritchie

Sometimes ends are in fact beginnings; beginnings ends. ~ Anna Godbersen

You don't think happy endings are stupid anymore?"
"Your question is irrelevant," Imogen said. "This isn't the end. ~ Scott Westerfeld

Then Magrat, who in Nanny Ogg's opinion had an innocent talent for treading on dangerous ground, said: "I wonder if we did the right thing? I'm sure it was a job for a handsome prince." "Hah!" said Granny, who was riding ahead. "And what good would that be? Cutting your way through a bit of bramble is how you can tell he's going to be a good husband, is it? That's fairy godmotherly thinking, that is! Goin' around inflicting happy endings on people whether they wants them or not, eh? ~ Terry Pratchett

If you knew how your day would end, would you still begin it? ~ N’ Zuri Za Austin

I tell ya! The road to success is an endless battle for you and me. ~ Steven Jackson

These felt very much like last moments. ~ China Mieville

Happy Endings are profitable. People can get misery for free. ~ Xavier Neal

The Russo brothers are the best people ever, and they cast me in 'Happy Endings.' I did text Joe Russo to say, 'I don't think my character dies, so if you need a local news cameraman to show up in 'Captain America 2' ... I know it doesn't make sense, but just hear me out on this!' He was really cool about it and turned me down right away. ~ Adam Pally

But here in the West, we just have to live with unhappy endings. ~ Nicolas Barreau

I was thinking I had noticed a curious lack of either enthusiasm or bitterness in the account of the world by Theobald's sister. There was in her story the flatness one associates with a storyteller who is accepting of unhappy endings, as if her life and her companions had never been exotic to her - as if they had always been staging a ludicrous and doomed effort at reclassification. ~ John Irving

I don't wish for the red house back, not really, yet in a way, I wish for everything back that ever was, everything that once seemed like forever and yet has vanished ... Standing here on an empty hilltop in New Hampshire, as a bulldozer slowly pushes the debris of a small red house into a neat pile, I allow, just for a moment, the past to push hard against the walls of my heart. Being alive, it seems, means learning to bear the weight of the passing of all things. It means finding a way to lightly hold all the places we've loved and left anyway, all the moments and days and years that have already been lived and lost to memory, even as we live on in the here and now, knowing full well that this moment, too, is already gone. It means, always, allowing for the hard truth of endings. It means, too, keeping faith in beginnings. ~ Katrina Kenison

Endings are the toughest, harder than beginnings. They must satisfy the expectations you have hopefully generated in your reader - not frustrate them, leave the reader grasping at elusive strings. ~ Jeffrey Thomas

Moment to moment we act freely, we make decisions and form opinions and there is very little to throttle us. We think each of us has a map marked with private routings and preferred habitual destinations, and go by a legend of our own. Yet it turns out you can overlay them and see a most amazing correspondence; what you believed were very personal contours aligning not exactly but enough that while our via points may diverge, our endings do not. ~ Chang-rae Lee

If you look for endings you can always find one, but I truly felt as if I had used up the last of my youth, if youth is that finite stage of life when it all feels expeditionary, inexact. ~ Charles Finch

Like you, I grew up in a remote animist village. But then I went to a strict Catholic education in France. I was perfectly content to accept the grand Shee Yee of the Otherworld and the Lord B, and Jesus and his mother as my spiritual icons as long as I didn't have to spend too long on my knees. I would have settled for a committee. I just wanted order. But once I started to see my own ghosts I understood what these religions were all about. They were clubs set up by people like me to stop themselves from going mad. You know what I really think happens? You die. You wait for your number. There's a bit of time to take care of unfinished business. And you pass on. And, as you don't come back, nobody actually knows what you pass on to. But that description has never been acceptable. People want an ending. They don't want to vanish into thin air. So these great religious gurus made some endings up. The more comfortable and happy your ending, the more members signed up and paid their fees. And the kings and emperors started to add rules and regulations to subjugate the commoners and keep them in line. As so they invented hell and told you if you coveted your neighbor's mule you wouldn't even get into the clubhouse at the end of it all. ~ Colin Cotterill

The bourgeoisie loves so-called " positive " types and novels with happy endings since they lull one into thinking that it is fine to simultaneously acquire capital and maintain one's innocence , to be a beast and still be happy . ~ Anton Chekhov

There are so many things I can't believe. That people deserve what they get, both bad and good. That one day I'll live in a world where people are judged by what they do instead of who they are. That happy endings don't have contingencies and conditions. ~ Jodi Picoult

You can't go back and you can't catch up. Happy endings are always bittersweet. ~ Alfred Bester

If you wish for something hard enough, the fairy tales teach us, you can get it in the end. But it's hardly ever the way you thought it would be, and the endings aren't always happy ones. ~ Jennifer Weiner

The best way to learn endings, as well as openings, is from the games of the masters. ~ Jose Raul Capablanca

The irony of life
Is our greatest fear is to forget,
Yet it's the only certain fate
That anything has ever met.
We know one day our earth
Will find itself victim to time,
That nothing will be left
To tell of your story or mine,
And still through life we rush
Scrambling for something to remember,
Perish the thought that ash be ash
And not the memory of an ember. ~ Erin Hanson

Happy endings are best achieved by keeping the right doors locked ~ Margaret Atwood

I was sorry, though, that our intimacy, like many things that are and will be, had to die with a dying fall. I do not greatly mind endings, for my life is made up of them, but sometimes they come too soon or too late, and sometimes they leave feeling of regret as of an old mistake or an indirect futility. ~ Everett Ruess

She lived in fear of ifonic endings. (91) ~ Anne Lamott

...As for having him only while on earth... that IS how it stands now, but don't give up. He's a really good person, Jane. And he loves you... You've got to have a little faith -- And keep dreaming. Some happy endings just take a little longer and are harder to come by. ~ Michele Paige Holmes

Because the end doesn't quite mean the end doesn't quite mean the end doesn't quite mean the end, Leo. Because in the end each end is also a beginning. ~ Daniel Glattauer

Not so bad this ending because one is getting used to endings: life like Morse, a series of dots and dashes, never forming a paragraph. ~ Graham Greene

Never say never," Arthur says. "Right?" So much hope hangs in one word. "Right," I say. "Never know what the universe has planned for us." I don't know what we have planned for us. What if there's a do-over down the line for us? What if we end up in the same city again and pick up where we left off? What if we go as far as we once hoped we would, and boom, happy ending for us? But what if this is it for us? What if we never get to kiss again? What if we're there for each other's big moments, but we aren't at the heart of those big moments anymore? What if the universe always wanted us to meet and stay in each other's lives forever as best friends? What if we rewrite everything we expect from happy endings? Or . . . What if we haven't seen the best us yet? ~ Becky Albertalli

You might ask yourself why you want to surprise your readers in the first place. A surprise ending is sort of like a surprise party. Probably some people, somewhere, enjoy having friends and trusted colleagues lunge at them in the sudden blinding light of their own living room, but I don't think most of us do. ~ Jincy Willett

You pick your endings, and your beginnings. You get to pick the frame, you know? Maybe you don't choose what's in the picture, but you decide on the frame. ~ John Green

I searched among her crayons for a color that represented autumn and pulled out an orange-toned crayon, never used. It read "Bittersweet," and I wondered why that particular name. Autumn was my favorite time of year… I was always ready for the change. I guess some people didn't see it that way. Some people wanted to cling to summer... I loved both seasons, but I thought no one would ever call spring bittersweet, even though it was just another change, another new cycle, an end to one season and a beginning for another in an endless, never-ending spiral. ~ Janet Rebhan

An elegant mind wants elegant endings ~ Hanya Yanagihara

MANIFESTO OF THE BRAVE AND BROKENHEARTED There is no greater threat to the critics and cynics and fearmongers Than those of us who are willing to fall Because we have learned how to rise With skinned knees and bruised hearts; We choose owning our stories of struggle, Over hiding, over hustling, over pretending. When we deny our stories, they define us. When we run from struggle, we are never free. So we turn toward truth and look it in the eye. We will not be characters in our stories. Not villains, not victims, not even heroes. We are the authors of our lives. We write our own daring endings. We craft love from heartbreak, Compassion from shame, Grace from disappointment, Courage from failure. Showing up is our power. Story is our way home. Truth is our song. We are the brave and brokenhearted. We are rising strong. ~ Brene Brown

They say that girls are the ones who want fairy tail endings, but then again, who are the authors of fairy tales? mostly men ... ~ Alina Radoi

There are no happy endings for such as us, Chella. No redemption. Not with our sins. Any joy is borrowed - laughter shared on the road, and left behind." He turned to Kai. "I have killed children, Kai Summerson. In such company you will too. ~ Mark Lawrence

Together the five orbiters Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour have flown a total of 133 successful missions, an unequaled accomplishment of engineering, management, and political savvy. But it's the two disasters that people remember, that most shape the shuttle's story. The lovely dream of spaceflight I grew up with is marred by the images of Challenger and Columbia breaking apart in the sky, the lost astronauts smiling on hopefully in their portraits, oblivious. Some people took the disasters to mean the entire space program had been a lie, that the dream itself was tainted with our fallibility. But even as a child, I knew it was more complex than that. If we want to see people take risks, we have to be prepared to sometimes see them fail. The story of American spaceflight is a story with many endings, a story of how we have weighed our achievements against our failures. ~ Margaret Lazarus Dean