Literary Happy Ending Quotes

Doc turned in the seat and looked back. The disappearing sun shone on his laughing face, his gay and eager face. With his left hand he held the bucking steering wheel.
Cannery Row looked after the ancient car. It made the first turn and was gone from sight behind a warehouse just as the sun was gone.
Fauna said, 'I wonder if I'd be safe to put up her gold star tonight. What the hell's the matter with you, Mack?'
Mack said, 'Vice is a monster so frightful of mien, I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings.' He put his arm around Hazel's shoulders. 'I think you'd of made a hell of a president,' he said. ~ John Steinbeck

Does this story have a happy ending?" Bobby asked.
"There is no such thing as an ending," she said. "Good things come out of bad things and bad things come out of good things, but it always continues. It's as in life. Books are life. There is just the part you read. They start before that. They finish after it. Everything carries on forever. You are only in it for those pages, for a tiny window of time. ~ David Whitehouse

A happy ending was imperative ~ E.M. Forster

And if there is one last thing I would have you know before we reach these final pages, it's that sometimes, no matter how hard we try, no matter how hard we want it to be so, sometimes there is no such a thing as happy ending.
This is my ending. This is how i burn. ~ T.J. Klune

Saying what you think and wading into the deep end don't always have a happy ending. Difficult conversations are something of a gamble and you have to be willing to be okay with the outcome. And you have to know going in, where you draw the line.
You have to know when in the conversation you are going to say no.
You have to know when you are going to say, "That doesn't work for me."
You have to know when to say, "I'm done."
You have to know when to say, "This isn't worth it."
"You are worth it."
The more I said what I thought , the more willing to dive into the difficult conversations, the more I was willing to say yes to me, the less I was willing to allow people in my life who left me emptier and unhappier and more insecure than before I saw them.
My friend who asked for all the money isn't the last person I walked away from during the Year of Yes.
No. No that friend was not.
No. ~ Shonda Rhimes

Not every story has a happy ending. Some only hold a happy beginning. ~ Rachel Higginson

You could be
the leaf that never falls from the tree
you could be
the sun that never leaves the sky
this might be
the happy ending without the ending
this might be
a reason to try ~ David Levithan

The Beginning of a Happy Ending is not as bad as it sounds. ~ Elena Martina

Do not be sad that all odds are against you; be happy that your real purpose is by you ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

This is no longer a tale about whether you will find fame or fortune or your perfect little happy ending. This is a tale about whether you are capable of growing from the snake of your own story into the hero of someone else's. ~ Soman Chainani

I never did understand
why the tree was still happy
at the end. The little boy
used her until she was
nothing but a stump.
She couldn't even run away.
But the ending was always the same:
And the tree was happy. ~ Naomi Shihab Nye

It's never to late to have a happy ending' Harvey Hoyland ~ Milly Johnson

In a culture which holds the two-parent patriarchal family in higher esteem than any other arrangement, all children feel emotionally insecure when their family does not measure up to the standard. A utopian vision of the patriarchal family remains intact despite all the evidence which proves that the well-being of children is no more secure in the dysfunctional male-headed household than in the dysfunctional female-headed household. Children need to be raised in loving environments. Whenever domination is present love is lacking. Loving parents, be they single or coupled, gay or straight, headed by females or males, are more likely to raise healthy, happy children with sound self-esteem. In future feminist movement we need to work harder to show parents the ways ending sexism positively changes family life. Feminist movement is pro-family. Ending patriarchal domination of children, by men or women, is the only way to make the family a place where children can be safe, where they can be free, where they can know love ~ Bell Hooks

I fear horror became so inextricably related to splatter punk in the late 1980s that a large segment of the audience turned away from it. And thriller became the more comfortable, cozier label because it promised a resolution, a happy ending. Horror came to mean, I'm going to leave your ass out here in the dark with no way to get home. And one of your legs is missing. ~ Christopher Rice

Watching others drink, I've never really got the impression I was missing much.' I added

'You're not' she smiled and winked, 'stick with sex addiction - it has a happy ending. ~ Jake Remington

I'll tell you a secret about storytelling. Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty ... were not perfect in the beginning. It's only a happy ending on the last page, right? If the princess had everything from the beginning, there wouldn't be a story. Anyone who is imperfect or incomplete can become the main character in the story. ~ Peach-Pit

The happy ending is our national belief. ~ Mary McCarthy

Each of us may think we know exactly what we need to make us happy, what will be good for us, what will ensure we have our happy ending, but life rarely works out in the way we expect, and our happy ending may have all sorts of unexpected twists and turns, be shaped in all sorts of unexpected ways ~ Jane Green

You cannot have a happy ending to a miserable journey. ~ Esther Hicks

We're brought up to expect a happy ending. But there are no happy endings. There's only death waiting for us. We find love and happiness, and it's snatched away from us without rhyme or reason. We're on a deserted space ship careening mindlessly among the stars. The world is Dachau, and we're all Jews. ~ Sidney Sheldon

To all my gentle readers who have treated me with love for over 30 years, I must say farewell. It has always been my ambition to die in harness with my head face down on a keyboard and my nose caught between two of the keys, but that's not the way it worked out. I have had a long and happy life and I have no complaints about the ending, thereof, and so farewell - farewell. ~ Isaac Asimov

Good things didn't last, people hurt each other every day, and nobody got a happy ending. But that night with him made me see it all in a new way. All the hardships and insults and disappointments in life didn't make this one blissful moment less important. They made it more. They made it matter. The very fact that it couldn't last was the reason to hold on to it - however we could. Yes, the world is full of unspeakable cruelty. But the answer wasn't to never feel hope, or bliss, or love - but to savor every fleeting, precious second of those feelings when they came. The answer wasn't to never love anyone. It was to love like crazy whenever you could. ~ Katherine Center

I'm saying that figuring out what's important in life and how to go about getting it is very difficult. Sometimes you get confused and you get tempted to just let other people make the rules. And some people are really happy to make the rules for other people. Adam Lyons, the man who runs the epiphany machine, is one of those people. ~ David Burr Gerrard

This book does not have a happy ending. The happy part is there is no ending, because I'll always find a way to keep going. ~ Chanel Miller

All there is is this deep-in-my-stomach feeling of terror, and this fear that there is no really happy ending anymore. ~ Ava Dellaira

My father once told me that a happy ending is just the place where you choose to stop telling the story. So this is where I choose to stop. More things are still going to happen, of course, some good, some bad. Some things never get any better. When people die they stay dead. None of us knows why we love, or why we stop loving, or why everyone we love we lose. ~ Leah Stewart

I always thought that we would be that couple in the movies but not all movies have a happy ending ~ Anonymous

Mr. Yeats makes great poetry out of what he calls his unhappiness about me, and he is happy in that. - Maud Gonne ~ Orna Ross

I don't feel like a trauma victim. I feel like a house after a fire. And sometimes I fell like someone who died but stayed in his body. And sometimes I feel like someone else died, like someone else sacrificed everything, so that I can have a normal life.
With wings.
And a tail.
And vampires.
And magicians.
And a boy in my arms, instead of a girl.
And a happy ending - even if it isn't the ending I ever would have dreamt for myself, or hoped for.
A chance. ~ Rainbow Rowell

People used to expect literary novels to deepen the experience of living; now they are happy with any sustained display of writerly cleverness. ~ Brian Reynolds Myers

Even now I believe for the most part, love is about choices. It's about putting down the poison and the dagger and making your own happy ending, most of the time, and that sometimes despite all your best choices and all your best intentions, fate wins anyway. ~ Meredith Grey

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

What story will you tell me?" "What kind of story would you like?" "An exciting story. One with an exotic climate and mortal peril." He had to smile at the relish in her voice. "Do we have bloodthirsty warring factions in this story?" "No war, please." She'd lost a brother to the Corsican's armies. He'd forgotten that, though she never would. "You want a happy ending, then?" She studied her teacup for a thoughtful moment. "I don't admit to my family that I still want the happy endings and wishes to come true. A mature woman should just take life as it comes, and I do have a great deal to be grateful for." "But a mature woman should also be honest with herself, and with me. You're allowed to wish for the happy endings, Sophie. For yourself and for Kit too." When ~ Grace Burrowes

My biggest adventures tend to come from the pages of the books I read. If you take those into account, I'm very well versed. I've lived through it all. But it's easier to make the risky decisions within the pages of make-believe. Living without a net and chasing adventure is just better when you're sure to get the happy ending. ~ Shae Scott

We'd turn our lives into a terrible adventure. A true-life horror story with a happy ending. A trial we'd survive to talk about. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

I'm a bitch because I can't be bothered trying anymore. Not when my efforts are rewarded with being treated like trash. Someone to be used, fucked and tossed out the morning after. My entire attitude might be seen as a cop-out, but I was so fucking tired of clawing my way out of the shit pile. People get to a point where they can't take anymore. Hope, faith and all that ... I've learnt the hard way just to let it go. Some people don't get their happy ending, no matter how deserving they are or aren't. Real life's a bitch and so am I. ~ Anonymous

Except you can't judge a book by its cover. 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. A girl or a monster or both. Not everyone in a story gets a happy ending. Not everyone who reads a story feels the same way about how it ends. And if you go back to the beginning and read it again, you may discover it isn't the same story you thought you'd read. Stories shift their shape. The two sisters are waiting for the moon to come up, which is not the same thing as waiting for the sun to go down. Not at all. ~ Kelly Link

It has long been a tradition among novel writers that a book must end by everybody getting just what they wanted, or if the conventional happy ending was impossible, then it must be a tragedy in which one or both should die. In real life very few of us get what we want, our tragedies don't kill us, but we go on living them year after year, carrying them with us like a scar on an old wound. ~ Willa Cather

In order to have a happy ending, in order to be triumphant, in order to be heroic, you have to tell your own story. The women's movement knows that; black people know that; brown people know that; yellow people know that. You have to be able to tell your own story in order to show that you are worthy--that you belong. ~ Nikki Giovanni

Sometimes you have to realise that somebody is not coming back and there will be no happy ending. You don't get the prince, you get the frog. And sometimes after a while the frog doesn't seem so bad and you realise that the prince was not in fact that much of a prince. ~ Hazel Osmond

If you think the story has a sad ending, it's because it's not over yet. ~ Emily Henry

Even villains have a happy ending every now and again. ~ L.J. Shen

I'm proud of everybody in our organization. Not every story has a happy ending. Doesn't mean it's a bad story. ~ David Blatt