Ending Well Quotes & Sayings

In our need for more and more rapid replacement of the worldly things around us, we can no longer afford to use them, to respect and preserve their inherent durability; we must consume, devour, as it were, our houses and furniture and cars as though they were the "good things" of nature which spoil uselessly if they are not drawn swiftly into the never-ending cycle of man's metabolism with nature. It is as though we had forced open the distinguishing boundaries which protected the world, the human artifice, from nature, the biological process which goes on in its very midst as well as the natural cyclical processes which surround it, delivering and abandoning to them the always threatened stability of a human world. — Hannah Arendt

Well, you have adventures. All start out with troubles, but then you admit your problems and become a better person by working really hard, which is what fertilizes the happy ending and allows it to bloom - just like the end of all the Rocky films, Rudy, The Karate Kid, the Star Wars and Indiana Jones trilogies, and The Goonies, which are my favorite films, even though I have sworn off movies until Nikki returns, because now my own life is the movie I will watch, and well, it's always on. — Matthew Quick

The purpose of life is to endure tragedy as well as comedy in hopes of sharing a story with a happy ending. — Jes Fuhrmann

His words hit me. He knew about Mila's and Gabriel's love ... perhaps he could change things. If he did, Eli and I could be together freely, but until then there was no happy ending. I could feel it. The love that Eli and I have was great, but when has any great love in history ended well? Romeo and Juliet, Cleopatra and Mark Antony, or Tristan and Isolde? Each and every one ended in tragedy, be it death or banishment. — Skyla Madi

Reading yourself as a fiction as well as a fact is the only way to keep the narrative open
the only way to stop the story running away under its own momentum, often towards an ending no one wants. — Jeanette Winterson

But if the world is watching, we might as well tell the truth. And the truth is, the church doesn't offer a cure. It doesn't offer a quick fix. The church offers death and resurrection. The church offers the messy, inconvenient, gut-wrenching, never-ending work of healing and reconciliation. The church offers grace. Anything else we try to peddle is snake oil. It's not the real thing. — Rachel Held Evans

People in the world can never imagine the length of days to those in asylums. They seemed never ending, and we welcomed any event that might give us something to think about as well as talk of. — Nellie Bly

A tragi-comedy, telling of an impoverished minister's desperate attempts to gain money by any means, beginning with a mercenary marriage and ending with sorcery. I should think it might be received very well. I believe I shall call it, ' Tis Pity She's a Corpse. — Susanna Clarke

About happy endings. Folk like a story to finish well. Doesn't matter if that's true to life or not. Helps to hear about folk being content. About good folk getting what they deserve. While you're listening you can believe, for a bit, that you're good too. Worth a happy ending. — Juliet Marillier

You get used to it, you act friendly, and you become a
shell of your former self.
At some point, you would package this situation, labeling
it as "every day", and send it to the depths of your
memories. There was no doubt you would try to justify it
as something like a memory as well.
"Time was the medicine to everything."
But that was wrong. Time was nothing but a slow
inducing poison. It gradually eroded things of the past,
with the only purpose of ending things and forcing you
into resignation. — Wataru Watari

But I don't even care. I don't even care that the sun's going to burn out in a matter of years, ending all life on Earth, well, five billion years, but still, guess what? I don't care. Well-being is a wonderful thing. — Jandy Nelson

And Garrison ... "
"Yeah, Maddie?"
"Well," Madeline said with cheeks red as a beet, "since we're leaving tomorrow, since it's all ending,and way may not be in touch gain, or at least not often ... I want to tell you ... that I think you're ... "Madeline suddenly stopped. She could not quite bring herself to say what she wanted to,Instead she simply stared at Garrison,Her heart aflutter and her palms sweating.In her Mind she was screaming it but her lips just wouldn't move."i think you're ... too ... " Garrison said with a wink. — Gitty Daneshvari

Every scenario that crossed her mind did not end well. And by not ending well, she meant ending up lip-locked against a wall. — Staci Hart

Many children, early on, acquire a love of places they have never been. Often, such wonder is summarily crushed on the crawl through the sludge of murky, confused adolescence on to the flat, cracked pan of adulthood with its airless vistas ever lurking beyond the horizon. Oh, well, sometimes such gifts of curiosity, delight and adventure do indeed survive the stationary trek, said victims ending up as artists, scholars, inventors and other criminals bent on confounding the commonplace and the platitudes of peaceful living. But never mind them for now, since, for all their flailing subversions, nothing really ever changes unless in service to convenience. — Steven Erikson

Failing well means ending something that is not working and choosing to do something else better. — Henry Cloud

I wish I had better news for everyone and you can all read my report on our findings in my upcoming paper, as well as on my Web site once I get it finished. In the end, though, my quest for Atlantis did teach me something. In all our pasts lie our futures. By our own hands and decisions we will be damned and we will be saved. Whatever you do, put forth your best effort even if all you're doing is chasing a never-ending rainbow. You might never reach the end of it, but along the way you'll meet people who will mean the world to you and make memories that will keep you warm on even the coldest nights. (Tory) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

If he cannot be infinite - his lov emeeting its eventual exhaustion, his light its shadows - this is the nature of landscapes. The forest meets mountain, the sea the shore. Brain meets bone, meets skin, meets hair; meets air. Day would not be, without night. Every limit, a wise woman once wrote, is a beginning as well as an ending. — Lauren Groff

Motormouth: So this is love? Well, love is a gift and a lot of people forget that. So you two better brace yourselves for a whole lot of ugly coming your way on a never ending train of stupid.
Penny: So you met my mom? — Mark O'Donnell

Over and over we lose this sense of feeling we are wholly in our skins by means already named as well as through extended duress. Those who toil too long without respite are also at risk. The soulskin vanishes when we are not paying attention to what we are really doing and particularly the cost to us."
"We lose the soulskin by becoming too involved with ego, by being too exacting, perfectionistic, or unnecessarily martyred, or driven by a blind ambition, or by being dissatisfied - about self, family, community, culture, world - and not saying or doing anything about it, or by pretending we are an ending source for others, or by not doing all we can to help ourselves. Oh, there are as many ways to lose the soul skin as there are women in the world."
"The only way to hold on to this sensual soulskin is to retain an exquisitely pristine consciousness about its value and uses. — Clarissa Pinkola Estes

People haven't stopped believing in love. They haven't stopped wanting to be in love. They just don't believe in a happy ending anymore. They still believe in love, and falling in love, but they know now that ... they know that romances almost never end as well as they begin. — Gregory David Roberts

But the Fear (that sensation that all writers get of how the hell do words get from my puny little brain to into a book, and isn't magic somehow involved, and surely I'm not qualified to be involved in any part of that process, and I somehow managed that tomorrow, but you mean I have to do it this morning too, well how do I even start?) withdraws quite a bit when it's already light and lovely outside when I get to my desk. So I got right past that big moment today, and into the fun slide down towards the ending, yelling whee. — Paul Cornell

Every limit is a beginning as well as an ending. — George Eliot

The Exile In July 587 BCE, Babylonian soldiers broke through Jerusalem's walls, ending a starvation siege that had lasted well over a year. They burned the city and Solomon's temple and took its king and many other leaders to Babylon as captives, leaving others to fend for themselves in the destroyed land. Many surrounding countries disappeared altogether when similar disasters befell them. But Judah did not. Instead, the period scholars most often call the "Babylonian exile" inspired religious leaders to revise parts of Scripture that had been passed down to them. It also sparked the writing of entirely new Scriptures and the revision of ideas about God, creation, and history. Much of what is called the Hebrew Scriptures or Old Testament was written, edited, and compiled during and after this national tragedy. — Walter Brueggemann

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

Maybe. Maybe. He said, "Does Dorian actually matter, or is he a pawn for Terrasen?"
"Don't even start with that." For a moment he thought she was done, but than she spat, "Killing him, Chaol, would be a mercy. Killing him would be a gift."
"I can't make the shot," Nesryn said again-a bit more sharply.
"Touch him," Chaol said, "and I'll make sure those bastards down there find Aedion."
Nesryn silently turned to them, slackening her bow. It was the only card he had to play, even if it made him a bastard as well.
The wrath Chaol found in Aelin's eyes were world-ending.
"You bring my court into this, Chaol," Aelin said with lethal softness, "and I don't care what you were to me, or what you have done to help me. You betray them, you hurt them, and I don't care how long it takes, or how far you go: I'll burn you and your gods-damned kingdom to ash. Then you'll learn just how much of a monster I can be."
Too far. He'd gone too far. — Sarah J. Maas

He knows as well as I do what the Why is. It's everything changing when I was ten. It's the bullying and the fear. So much fear of everything, but mostly death. Sudden, out-of-the-blue death. It's also me being terrified of life. It's the giant emptiness in my chest. It's touching my face or my skin and feeling nothing. This is the Why of me staying home in the first place. And the Why of me eating. And the Why of me ending up here. But that doesn't mean I want to die. — Jennifer Niven

He grabbed me with both hands and began pushing me backward.
I lost my balance. The ledge was at an angle, and it was covered with loose gravel. I was less than a foot from the edge.
It was at that very moment that the clouds parted. The September sun burst through. The entire world was illuminated.
Time shattered into moments.
I could see for a hundred miles in every direction.
I could see mountain peeks and pristine lakes. And I could somehow feel as well as see the never-ending drop that toyed with me, ruffling my hair, pulling at my back, one step behind me. — Axel Avian

Happy endings aren't for cowards. I've been alive for how many years, and I've just found that one out. I learned to be unfaithful from my parents. Not infidelity in the classic sense- but I was always prepared for the unhappy ending, which made me less willing to word toward a happy one. I was unfaithful to the idea of a well-adjusted future. — Jill Davis

Unlike me, he realized that Dustfinger would do anything in return for such a promise. All he wants is to go back to his own world. He doesn't even stop to ask if his story there has a happy ending!"
"Well, that's no different from real life," remarked Elinor gloomily. "You never know if things will turn out well. Just now our own story looks like it's coming to a bad end. — Cornelia Funke

Grandmaster games are said to begin with novelty, which is the first move of the game that exits the book. It could be the fifth, it could be the thirty-fifth. We think about a chess game as beginning with move one and ending with checkmate. But this is not the case. The games begins when it gets out of book, and it end when it goes into book..And this is why Game 6 [between Garry Kasparov and Deep Blue] didn't count ... Tripping and falling into a well on your way to the field of battle is not the same thing as dying in it ... Deep Blue is only itself out of book; prior to that it is nothing. Just the ghosts of the game itself. — Brian Christian

I have a confession to make. I don't really want to know. I like a happy ending as well as the next person, but I love the mystery and the uncertainty and the electric current of possibility. There's a reason the best love stories end at the first kiss. Jane Austen had this down; it's all about the chase. We're not really interested in Elizabeth and Darcy after the wedding bells fade, or in Cinderella and her prince after the slipper is returned. — Sophie Blackall

The ultimate act of heroism shouldn't be death. You're always saying you want to give Baz the stories he deserves ... So you're going to kill him off? Isn't the best revenge supposed to be a life well-lived? The punk-rock way to end it would be to let them live happily ever after. — Rainbow Rowell

Well, I just get as close as I can to a happy ending, then I shut the door behind me and move on. — James Goss

I guess that's what you get when your relationship starts by betraying someone - a never-ending well of doubt. If we could do it to someone, it could be done to us. — Anonymous

Me as I think I am and me as I am in fact - sorrow, in other words, and the ending of sorrow. One third, more or less, of all the sorrow that the person I think I am must endure is unavoidable. It is the sorrow inherent in the human condition, the price we must pay for being sentient and self-conscious organisms, aspirants to liberation, but subject to the laws of nature and under orders to keep on marching, through irreversible time, through a world wholly different to our well-being, toward decrepitude and the certainty of death. The remaining two thirds of all sorrow is homemade and, so far as the universe if concerned, unnecessary. — Aldous Huxley

A romance is never just a romance, there's adventure, mystery and movement.

You need a grand, dramatic setting - the Swiss Alps were always an personal favourite of mine - and a chance meeting, on a train, a cruise, or perhaps the hero and heroine find themselves shipwrecked on a desert island.

The men are normally rich, well-to-do - but never vulgar with their money. Young men lack the maturity to take control so an older man is essential to provide the reassurance the heroine's needs.

There's always a fair amount of turbulence before he sweeps in to save the day. A happy ending is an absolute must. — Ida Pollock

Possible Ending #16 (Life Imitates Art Imitates Life Imitates Art Imitates): I'd seen this movie. Obvious ending: outright betrayal, lesson learned, life is heartbreak, people who mean well still fuck you over, everyone's sad, greedy, looking out for number one, no consideration for the fragile fat boy whose displayed cynicism only masks a deeper hope that everyone's okay, will ultimately end up all right, that love exists, that happiness may not be stable but at least comes in bursts, that everything worthwhile wasn't just a self-created illusion. — Adam Wilson

And what is true for human beings is true for every living thing: all organisms require alternating periods of growth and equilibrium. Any person or system exposed to ceaseless novelty and change risks falling into chaos; but one that is too rigid or static ceases to grow and eventually dies. This never-ending dance between change and stability is like the anchor and the waves. Adult relationships mirror these dynamics all too well. We seek a steady, reliable anchor in our partner. Yet at the same time we expect love to offer a transcendent experience that will allow us to soar beyond our ordinary lives. The challenge for modern couples lies in reconciling the need for what's safe and predictable with the wish to pursue what's exciting, mysterious, and awe-inspiring. — Esther Perel

Aggression, it's the next thing to war, except you don't get killed. Aggression is what you have every day with your wife. Aggression is what you have every day at the office. Box is a legalized form of aggression, where the ending is well-defined, the combat is well-delivered, and you got 10 rounds of two equally-sized fighters fighting aggressively to hurt each other. — Ferdie Pacheco

An ending is only happening because at some point it was a beginning. And if an ending is dependent upon a beginning, I would be well advised to focus on the miracle of beginnings verses the pain of endings. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

If she loved him the way she said she did, she wanted him whole. Maybe this was what love meant after all: sacrifice and selflessness. It did not mean hearts and flowers and a happy ending, but the knowledge that another's well-being is more important than one's own. — Melissa De La Cruz

Without realizing what she was doing and more on an impulse than anything else, she leaned forward and kissed him. It was a simple, yet firm kiss and she pulled back after only a moment. But it sent a thrill through her.
He leaned down for another. But she put her finger on his lips to stop him.
"That was my reward to you," she said as they danced. "Don't squander it."
"Reward? he asked still seeming both surprised and delighted at this unexpected attention. "What for?"
"Why for living, Vaelros. And for doing so much else to help me. I will have you rewarded in state as well. But that was just from me."
She saw Vaelros flush and she gave him a brilliant smile. "You don't like my reward?" she asked.
"I do!" he replied. "I want only to learn how to earn more."
The music was fading. The song was ending. Luthiel stepped back and let her hands drop.
"A mysterious thing, my heart," she said. — Robert Fanney

It didn't and doesn't turn out well. There is no happy ending to the story of sorrow if you are born with a predilection for despair. The world is, after all, a coarse and brutal and cruel place. It's only a matter of how long you can live with it. — Elizabeth Wurtzel

People are going to think I'm morbid, loving all these sad books. I actually don't mind a happy ending in a novel - certainly, it's nice when it happens. But when you've invested so much time and your fingers have pushed through all that paper and you get to the end ... well, a tragic ending kind of goes with the tragedy of finishing a book. — Julia L. Roberts

Religions, to a large extent, became divisive rather than unifying forces. Instead of bringing about an ending of violence and hatred through a realization of the fundamental oneness of all life, they brought more violence and hatred, more divisions between people as well as between different religions and even within the same religion. They became ideologies; belief systems people could identify with and so use them to enhance their false sense of self. Through them they could make themselves "right" and others "wrong" and thus define their identity through their enemies, the "others", the "nonbelievers" or "wrong believers" who not infrequently they saw themselves justified in the killing. — Eckhart Tolle

Death has no repeal. It is a brute ending that leaves us the legacy of an inscrutable silence. Therefore, I understand the voice of mercy very well. — Janny Wurts

To honor with hymns and panegyrics those who are still alive is not safe; a man should run his course and make a fair ending, and then we will praise him; and let praise be given equally to women as well as men who have been distinguished in virtue. — Plato

But what is the sense in forever speculating what might have happened had such and such a moment turned out differently? One could presumably drive oneself to distraction in this way. In any case, while it is all very well to talk of 'turning points', one can surely only recognize such moments in retrospect. Naturally, when one looks back to such instances today, they may indeed take the appearance of being crucial, precious moments in one's life; but of course, at the time, this was not the impression one had. Rather, it was as though one had available a never-ending number of days, months, years in which to sort out the vagaries of one's relationship with Miss Kenton; an infinite number of further opportunities in which to remedy the effect of this or that misunderstanding. There was surely nothing to indicate at the time that such evidently small incidents would render whole dreams forever irredeemable. — Kazuo Ishiguro

Everything that has a beginning has an ending. Make your peace with that and all will be well. — Jack Kornfield

There's no happy ending ... Nevertheless, we might well say that is exactly Harriet Beecher Stowe's point. In 1852 slavery had not been abolished. Slaves were still on the plantations and many of them were in the hands of people like Legree. Her book was written to shame the collective conscience of America into action against an atrocity which was still continuing. So a happy ending would have been, frankly, a lie and a betrayal. ...

Most of the charges are basically true. Stowe did stereotype. She did sentimentalize. She offered a role model which later offended African American pride. On the other hand, what she did worked. She wasn't trying to provide a role model for African Americans. She was trying to make white Americans ashamed of themselves. ...

Perhaps the short answer to her critics is to ask, "Do you want glory, approval, all those good things? Or do you want to achieve your goal? — Thomas A. Shippey

It just doesn't make sense," Elizabeth insisted. "Are we supposed to believe that civilization has just come to an end?"
"Well," Clark offered, "it was always a little fragile, wouldn't you say?" They were sitting together in the Skymiles Lounge, where Elizabeth and Tyler had set up camp.
"I don't know." Elizabeth spoke slowly, looking out at the tarmac. "I've been taking art history classes on and off for years, between projects. And of course art history is always pressed up close against non-art history, you see catastrophe after catastrophe, terrible things, all these moments when everyone must have thought the world was ending, but all those moments, they were all temporary. It always passes."
Clark was silent. He didn't think this would pass. — Emily St. John Mandel

Reading - an endless journey; a long, indeed never-ending journey that made one more temperate as well as more loving and kind. — Nina George

Go all the way to Sun Alliance to Chancery Lane, only to be told that they wouldn't insure my new house because of my profession. "Actors ... and writers ... well, you know."
..I couldn't help feeling something of a reject from society as I walked out again into Chancery Lane ... my solicitor cheerfully informs me that several big companies, including Eagle Star won't touch actors. The happy and slightly absurd ending to this story is that I finally find a willing insurer in the National Farmers' Union at Huntingdon. — Michael Palin

The people thrown into other cultures go through something of the anguish of the butterfly, whose body must disintegrate and reform more than once in its life cycle. In her novel "Regeneration," Pat Barker writes of a doctor who "knew only too well how often the early stages of change or cure may mimic deterioration. Cut a chrysalis open, and you will find a rotting caterpillar. What you will never find is that mythical creature, half caterpillar, half butterfly, a fit emblem of the human soul, for those whose cat of mind leads them to seek such emblems. No, the process of transformation consists almost entirely of decay." But the butterfly is so fit an emblem of the human soul that its name in Greek is "psyche," the word for soul. We have not much language to appreciate this phase of decay, this withdrawal, this era of ending that must precede beginning. Nor of the violence of the metamorphosis, which is often spoken of as though it were as graceful as a flower blooming. — Rebecca Solnit

A Chinese saying describes it well: "As far away as the horizon, and right in front of your face." You can run toward it forever, run faster and faster, and never get any closer. Only when you stop do you realize you are already there. That is exactly our collective situation right now. All of the solutions to the global crisis are sitting right in front of us, but they are invisible to our collective seeing, existing, as it were, in a different universe. When we are trapped in a story, we can only do the things that that story can recognize. Often we are aware of being trapped (the old story is ending) but don't have access to any alternative (we haven't yet inhabited a new story). — Charles Eisenstein

We are a stoic, reserved bunch who hide our emotions well - except when reading a terribly sad or poignant story, of course. I have been known to sob aloud at a tragic ending. — Lynn Austin

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

Well, a love story, that's no story at all. People don't want a happy ending. They want conflict. They want the heroine to fall for man she can never have. — Jodi Picoult

I wouldn't perform in front of the Nazis. I hear they didn't take freedom of speech too well. It would be a fun gig to rip into them, but I don't think the ending would be great for me. — Jim Jefferies

You were right the first time, Cathy. It was a stupid, silly story.
Ridiculous! Only insane people would die for the sake of love. I'll
bet you a hundred to one a woman wrote that junky romantic trash!"
Just a minute ago I'd despised that author for bringing about such a
miserable ending, then there I went, rushing to the defense. "T. M.
Ellis could very well have been a man! Though I doubt any woman writer
in the nineteenth century had much chance of being published, unless
she used her initials, or a man's name. And why is it all men think
everything a woman writes is trivial or trashy-or just plain silly
drivel? Don't men have romantic notions? Don't men dream of finding
the perfect love? And it seems to me, that Raymond was far more
mushy-minded than Lily! — V.C. Andrews

And so religions, to a large extent, became divisive rather than unifying forces. Instead of bringing about an ending of violence and hatred through a realization of the fundamental oneness of all life, they brought more violence and hatred, more divisions between people as well as between different religions and even within the same religion. — Eckhart Tolle

I believe there's plenty of market for each; we're talking about an ecosystem that is going to support billions of devices, so a competitive landscape is good for consumers, developers, and the platforms alike. Apple brings a smooth elegance to its devices and platform, with the best marketplace experience to boot. Google brings a higher volume of devices as well as a more diverse ecosystem to interact with. The real story here is that Microsoft is nowhere to be seen, ending a two-decade monopoly and creating biggest opportunity for software startups probably ever. — Aaron Levie

Its Scaled hide was dull brown That fitted in well with our surrounding, and its eyes a disturbing crimson. The low slung body featured powerful legs ending in scythelike claws anda long, flexible tail that moved hypnotically back and forth, like a cat's. Just behind its shoulders a pair of vestigial wings shifted and settled. — Marie Brennan

He longed for the little cabin and the sun-kissed sea - for the cool interior of the well-built house, and for the never-ending wonders of the many books. — Edgar Rice Burroughs

Christy said. "It's just weird, your seeing him like that. What are you going to do?"
"Nothing. What can I do?"
"Maybe he'll call you to see if you're okay," Katie said.
"No," Christy said, "in the movies he would have told his friend to stop the car, and he would have run back to you with an umbrella and walked you the rest of the way hoe, and you would have made him a pot of tea."
Sierra laughed. "I am drinking tea right now," she said. "Maybe my life is a low budget 'B' movie, and all I get is the tea. No hero. No umbrella."
"Yeah, well then my life is a class 'Z' movie," Katie said. "No tea. No hero. No umbrella. No plot
"
"Yours is more of a mystery," Christy interrupted cheerfully. "The ending will surprise all of us. — Robin Jones Gunn

Visionary feminism is a wise and loving politics. It is rooted in the love of male and female being, refusing to privilege one over the other. The soul of feminist politics is the commitment to ending patriarchal domination of women and men, girls and boys. Love cannot exist in any relationship that is based on domination and coercion. Males cannot love themselves in patriarchal culture if their very self-definition relies on submission to patriarchal rules. When men embrace feminist thinking and preactice, which emphasizes the value of mutual growth and self-actualization in all relationships, their emotional well-being will be enhanced. A genuine feminist politics always brings us from bondage to freedom, from lovelessness to loving. — Bell Hooks

Heartbreak is more common than happiness. No one wants to say that, but it's true. We're taught to believe not only that everyone deserves a happy ending, but that if we try hard enough, we will get one. That's simply no the case. Happy endings, life long loves, are the products of both effort and luck. We can control them, to some extent and though our feelings always seem to have a life of their own, we can at least be open to love. But, luck, the other component, well there's nothing we can do about that one. Call it God's plan or predestination or divine intervention, but we're all at its mercy. And sometimes God isn't very merciful. Jane taught me that. — Beth Pattillo

I am convinced that it is not the fear of death, of our lives ending that haunts our sleep so much as the fear ... that as far as the world is concerned, we might as well never have lived. — Harold S. Kushner

..love is as complex an emotion as exists. There are many reasons why love does not prosper.
.. the waters are perilous, and you would do well to know that, because unlike your novels, not every story has a happy ending. — Mary Lydon Simonsen

Wisdom, Happiness, and Courage are not waiting somewhere out beyond sight at the end of a straight line; they're part of a continuous cycle that begins right here. They're not only the ending, but the beginning as well. — Benjamin Hoff

At the time I thought the winner in an argument was the person who put forward the most logical support for his position. Of course, this isn't true. Human history, from gardening disputes to genocide, is full of examples of people with the most decent, well-argued stance ending up with their face in the mud in front of a naked display of power. — Mark Barrowcliffe

Frank turned to look down at me, and he was right there, so close. Hi, he said.
I looked up at him.Now that the moment was here, it didn't feel scary. What would happen would happen, and I couldn't know or control it. But I was ready for it to begin. Hey, I said.
In a well-ordered universe, he said, and I could hear how nervous he was, I'd be able to do this. He leaned his head down and kissed me softly, then pulled back, making sure this was okay.
I smiled at him. Then we must be in one, I said. And as the sun rose behind us and he bent his head down to kiss me again, I leaned forward.
Toward him, and to whatever came next. — Morgan Matson

No matter how beneficial a disappearing act might be for me, I could never tear myself away from a show in progress. Even when the plot's tragic ending is apparent to the entire audience. Perhaps there's a deus ex machina that will lower from the ceiling and turn the whole debacle into a romantic comedy. never can tell. Paid the full ticket price, might as well stay. — Josh Kilmer-Purcell

She gave me a lopsided quirk of a smile. "Joss," her voice hoarse, barely audible.
I wanted to run. I know. That's horrible. But I wanted to run away from this part. People ending up in hospital had never concluded well in my life, and seeing her there, so vulnerable, so exhausted, just reminded me of how close we might have come to losing her.
I felt a hand squeeze mine and I turned my head to see Hannah watching me. She looked as pale as I felt, and her fingers were trembling between mine. She was scared too. I smiled reassuringly at her, hoping I was pulling it off. "Ellie is okay. Come on." I tugged on her hand and pulled her with me to Ellie's bed side.
I reached out for the hand Ellie had held out for her mom, and I slid mine into it, feeling relief and love as she gave me a gentle squeeze. — Samantha Young

The writing life is one long, never-ending search for narrative. Well, it's not even a conscious searching. It happens even while you're busy buying groceries and when you're fast asleep. It's a curse. — Miriam Toews

Most journeys have a clear beginning, but on some the ending is less well-defined. The question is, at what point do you bite your lip and head for home? — Tahir Shah

Well, that feels a little bit like stealin' yer parent's car keys for a joy ride and ending up crashin' it, huh?"
"We kind of hijacked the sun, Russell. — Amy A. Bartol

Healthy children are born from healthy, respected, well-nourished and educated mothers and it is imperative that they have a voice in the decisions which affect them. If you empower a mother and let her have her say towards a poverty-free future, the positive impact this would have on ending hunger will be immense. — Dionne Warwick

You were a well-respected agent, Michael, a rags-to-riches fairytale ending. Until you became disgraced. Now it appears your own organization wishes to be rid of you. Why is this?"
"My gun turned back into a pumpkin. — Nenia Campbell

Well," the voice said, seemingly oblivious, "one thing that does happen when you live a long time is that you start to realise the essential futility of so much that we do, especially when you see the same patterns of behaviour repeated by succeeding generations and across different species. You see the same dreams, the same hopes, the same ambitions and aspirations, reiterated, and the same actions, the same courses and tactics and strategies, regurgitated, to the same predictable and often lamentable effects, and you start to think, So? Does it really matter? Why really are you bothering with all this? Are these not just further doomed, asinine ways of attempting to fill your vacuous, pointless existence, wedged slivered as it is between the boundless infinitudes of dark oblivion book-ending its utter triviality?" "Uh-huh, — Iain M. Banks

As the years went by and age overtook her, there was something comical yet touching in her bedraggled appearance on this awesome occasion - the small, hunched-over figure, her studied absorption in the implausible notion that there would be yet another spring, oblivious to the ending of her own days, which she knew perfectly well was near at hand, sitting there with her detailed chart under those dark skies in the dying October, calmly plotting the resurrection. - E. B. White — Katharine S. White

Julio's Day is a story of one man's life, but it's a great more than that as well. It's the story of the life of a century, also told as if a day. Beginning with Julio's birth in 1900 and ending with his death in 2000, the graphic novel touches on most of the major events that shaped the 20th century. — Brian Evenson

How are you, Rory?' [the Doctor] asked.
I [Rory] ... answered him. 'It's been odd being you.'
'Isn't it?' The Doctor's smile didn't quite reach his eyes.
'How do you cope?'
'Ah ... ' The Doctor picked away at a scrap of loose paint on the door. 'Well, I just get as close as I can to a happy ending, then I shut the door behind me and move on.'
I nodded.
We shut the door behind us and moved on. — James Goss

Beside the sleeping Max, who was curled up like a little boy, knees tucked into his chest, mouth pursed into a surprised pout, lay Sanary's Southern Lights. Perdu picked up the slim volume. Max had underlined certain sentences in pencil and jotted some questions in the margins; he had read the book as a book ought to be read. Reading - an endless journey; a long, indeed never-ending journey that made one more temperate as well as more loving and kind. Max had set out on that journey. With each book he would absorb more of the world, things and people. — Nina George

How close is the ending, well, nobody knows.
The future's a mystery, and anything goes.
Love is confusing, and life is hard.
But you fight to survive, 'cause you've made it this far. — Adam Young

Have I been conditioned to believe that if I am not solicitous, if I am not forthcoming, if I am not a never-ending cornicopia of entertaining delights, they will take their collections of milk-bottle tops and their mangy one-eared teddy bears and go away into the woods by themselves to play snipers? Probably. What my mother things was merely cute may have been lethal. — Margaret Atwood

My life is ending, I know that well, but every day that is left me I feel how earthly life is in touch with a new infinite, unknown, but approaching life, the nearness of which sets my soul quivering with rapture, my mind glowing and my heart weeping with joy. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I've thought about it more than a thousand times. It was a thousand times worse, so I suppressed it, I suppressed it to death. The moment that I heard that Meahri was leaving, I thought the world was ending because at that moment, I was full of regret. I was avoiding, not thinking, and pretending it wasn't what my heart was hoping for earlier. I'm sorry, because I've made Meahri cry so many times. I'll do well. I'll take care of her forever. Tae-sang, this is my first and last request of you. Just this once, forgive me. — Yoon Sang-hyun

IF YOU WANT A STORYBOOK ENDING, stop - now - and remember them in that tender moment. Be content to know that they embarked on a series of adventures throughout the West and that they stayed together through thick and thin for forty-five years.
But know this as well: If their story ended here, no one would remember them at all.
Where a tale begins and where it ends matters. Who tells the story, and why . . . That makes all the difference. — Mary Doria Russell

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

He had found riches beyond worldly imagination. He had found the never ending well of love. — Soroosh Shahrivar

Is there any of the usual social occasions which it is not difficult to avoid? But if you decide that you cannot very well ignore your worldly obligations, and that you will therefore carry them out properly, the demands on your time will multiply, bringing physical hardship and mental tension; in the end, you will spend your whole life pointlessly entangled in petty obligations.
'The day is ending, the way is long; my life already begins to stumble on its journey.' The time has come to abandon all ties. I shall not keep promises, nor consider decorum. Let anyone who cannot understand my feelings feel free to call me mad, let him think I am out of my senses, that I am devoid of human warmth. Abuse will not bother me; I shall not listen if praised. — Yoshida Kenko

I came to writing mysteries through poetry and still think that a well-constructed mystery is very much like a well-constructed sonnet. Both are artificial forms. Both start off in one direction and then, with a twist of the concluding couplet/surprising ending, both reveal that they were headed somewhere different all the time. — Margaret Maron

The tight link that Protestants perceive between Scripture and salvation explains the great energy they have poured into studying, distributing, and translating the Scriptures, as well as producing the never-ending deluge of printed material explaining, mediating, parsing, debating, exploring, and riffing on the Bible. — Mark A. Noll

Losing this part of my life, this time of being a mother to growing children, is indeed an ending. For months, I've carried that quiet sorrow, getting used to its heaviness, the way one learns to live with the chronic soreness of a joint, a tenderness in wrist or knee. What I long to do now is to let the sadness go as well, to have faith that even as my sons graduate from high school and leave home, and this phase of our family life draws to a close, there will be new beginnings not just for them, but for all of us. — Katrina Kenison

Bullock, Sam, died at the age of one-twelve. They'd been married five years. She was forty-six."
"Isn't that romantic?"
"Heart-tugging. First husband was younger, a callow seventy-three to her twenty-two."
"Wealthy?"
"Was - not Sam Bullock wealthy, but well-stocked. Got eaten by a shark."
"Step off."
"Seriously. Scuba diving out in the Great Barrier Reef. He was eighty-eight. And this shark cruises along and chomp, chomp."
She gave Eve a thoughtful look. "Ending as shark snacks is in my top-ten list of ways I don't want to go out. How about you?"
"It may rank as number one, now that I've considered it a possibility. Any hint of foul play?"
"They weren't able to interview the shark, but it was put down as death by misadventure. — J.D. Robb

All his [Laurent's] great powerful body wanted was to do nothing, to wallow in never-ending idleness and self-indulgence. He would have liked to eat well, sleep well, satisfy his passions liberally, without stirring from one spot or risking the misfortune of a bit of fatigue. — Emile Zola