Quotes & Sayings About Stories Ending

Horror fiction seems to spawn more dumbass 'rules' than any other kind of writing, and one of the dumbest is the assumed 'requirement' of a twist ending, going all the way back to H.H. Munro. This story is also the result of a long rumination on how stories are sometimes scuttled or diminished by succumbing to such 'rules'. — David J. Schow

The sad ending is only because the author stops telling the story. But it still goes on. It's just untold. — Mark Polish

People like to talk about "Cinderella stories," but Cinderella didn't get her happy ending without lifting a finger. She had to show up at the ball, be charming and smooth, and win over the prince. Of course she had help along the way, but ultimately it was up to her to make the fairy-tale ending happen. — Michael Oher

We like recovery stories to move quickly through the dark so we can get to the sweeping redemptive ending. I worry that this lack of honest accounts of overcoming adversity has created a Gilded Age of Failure. — Brene Brown

You, my lord, are the ending of all true stories. — Martine Leavitt

If you don't share your stories with other people. do they even count? If you don't share your stories, do they even need an ending? I know, it's that stupid if a tree falls in the forest sort of question, but I mean it. — Aaron Starmer

A true love story has always been about the journey, not the ending. — Shannon L. Alder

Do not start a story unless you have an ending in mind. You can change the story's ending if you wish, but you should always have a destination. — Gene Wolfe

I've always admired the tradition of storytellers who sat in the public market and told their stories to gathered crowds. They'd start with a single premise and talk for hours - the notion of one story, ever-changing but never-ending. — Nicolas Roeg

An ending was an ending. No matter how many pages of sentences and paragraphs of great stories led up to it, it would always have the last word. — Sarah Dessen

Each of us has a sophisticated system that throws away most of our experiences, keeps only a few choice samples, mixes them up with bits from movies we've seen, novels we've read, speeches we've heard, and daydreams we've savoured, and out of all that jumble it weaves a seemingly coherent story about who I am, where I came from and where I am going. This story tells me what to love, whom to hate and what to do with myself. This story may even cause me to sacrifice my life, if that's what the plot requires. We all have our genre. Some people live a tragedy, others inhabit a never-ending religious drama, some approach life as if it were an action film, and not a few act as if in a comedy. But in the end, they are all just stories. What, — Yuval Noah Harari

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 feel very proud in what we've created in the 'Spiderwick' stories. And, frankly, I am glad we are ending the series on a high-note. — Tony DiTerlizzi

But back then, back on Lispenard Street, I didn't know so much of this. Then, we were only standing and looking up at that red-brick building, and I was pretending that I never had to fear for him, and he was letting me pretend this: that all the dangerous things he could have done, all the ways he could have broken my heart, were in the past, the stuff of stories, that the time that lay behind us was scary, but the time that lay ahead of us was not. — Hanya Yanagihara

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

Anyone who is suffering from shame and public humiliation needs to know one thing: You can survive it ... you can insist on a different ending to your story. Have compassion for yourself. We all deserve compassion, and to live both online and off in a more compassionate world. — Monica Lewinsky

Each of us has our definition of adventure: ending an unsatisfying
relationship, returning to school, parachute jumping or training for a
marathon. Go ahead. Get your thrill on. — Gina Greenlee

Tell me a story, Pew. What kind of story, child? A story with a happy ending. There's no such thing in all the world. As a happy ending? As an ending. — Jeanette Winterson

16. The last paragraphs of individual stories are worth careful examination and rereading. What details does Keegan set up earlier in each piece to make these endings particularly powerful? How does she seal each story while still using a light hand? When does she allow ambiguity? Which ending do you see as most effective, and why? — Marina Keegan

We tend to think that our age is the most apocalyptic of all. But imagine living in a shtetl in Eastern Europe in the late 1930s. Or during the First World War, amidst that unprecedented butchery. Or during the Black Death, when one-third of Europe's population died. Or in any number of places around the world assaulted by colonialism. The world is always ending, and every time there's a storyteller bearing witness. And if there isn't, then that world doesn't end, it's worse than that: It simply disappears. A place and a time that is not expressed in stories mostly vanishes from human consciousness. So yes, I do believe stories and their creators are still relevant. — Yann Martel

Saying my story makes me want to change it, make it sound pretty the way I do with the stories I tell the workers. I'd like it to have a beginning as grand as a ball and an ending in a whisper, like a mother tucking in a child for sleep. — Shannon Hale

Let people know that you will always believe in the happy ending to the story
because the story doesn't end here. Some happy endings will never be read in this life. But the atonement of Jesus Christ promises us that our stories will all have successful conclusions one day, if we put our trust in him. — Emily Watts

The secret is to start a story near the ending. — Chris Offutt

The inimitable stories of Tong-King never have any real ending, and this one, being in his most elevated style, has even less end than most of them. But the whole narrative is permeated with the odour of joss-sticks and honourable high-mindedness, and the two characters are both of noble birth. — Ernest Bramah

Nothing was easy, and sometimes she failed, and sometimes she thought that the fairy stories were right, that there must indeed be easier ways of living happily ever after; but defeat is a poor ending to any tale, so she kept trying. — Sonya Hartnett

I'm not sure whether that had to do with the humor, or with the unfashionable fairy-tale ending, which is very different from much of what I read in The New Yorker, where short stories seem to end with someone staring off at the white walls of a white room, and you think that something's happened but you're not quite sure what. — Jennifer Weiner

I try every time for a project to have a natural ending. As much as I can, I try to follow the story and to give it its own end. — Sophie Calle

An ending is an artificial device; we like endings, they are satisfying, convenient, and a point has been made. But time does not end, and stories march in step with time. — Penelope Lively

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

Each Fable is inspired by some true stories which doesn't have an happy ending, unlike the Fable. — Neetesh Dixit

There was once, in the country of Alifbay, a sad city, the saddest of cities, a city so ruinously sad that it had forgotten its name. It stood by a mournful sea full of glumfish, which were so miserable to eat that they made people belch with melancholy even though the skies were blue ...
And in the depths of the city, beyond an old zone of ruined buildings that look like broken hearts, there lived a happy young fellow by name of Haroun, the only child of the storyteller Rashid Khalifa, whose cheerfulness was famous throughout that unhappy metropolis, and whose never-ending stream of tall, and winding tales had earned him not one but two nicknames. To his admirers he was Rashid the Ocean of Notions, as stuffed with cheery stories as the sea was full of glumfish; but to his jealous rivals he was the Shah of Blah. — Salman Rushdie

The opposite of recognizing that we're feeling something is denying our emotions. The opposite of being curious is disengaging. When we deny our stories and disengage from tough emotions, they don't go away; instead, they own us, they define us. Our job is not to deny the story, but to defy the ending - to rise strong, recognize our story, and rumble with the truth until we get to a place where we think, Yes. This is what happened. This is my truth. And I will choose how this story ends. — Brene Brown

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

The power of owning our stories, even the difficult ones, is that we get to write the ending. — Brene Brown

I can't really write anything without knowing the ending. I don't know how people do that. Even with my superhero stuff, I have to know at least where I want to take the characters and what the ending of my story with them will be. I just can't structure stories or character arcs and stuff without knowing the endpoint. — Jeff Lemire

Perfect endings... they don't exist, 'Phie. Only in stories, where nothing ever really changes. Here, right now, isn't a story. There is no happy ending, because it's not the end. Do you understand? — Joe Ducie

There are others. There will be others. Other heroes, other heroines. Other prophecies to fulfill, other adversaries to despise. There will be stories told and forgotten, and reinvented anew until one day, perhaps, the oldest are remembered, and the beginning may end, and the ending begin. — Jacqueline Carey

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

But she always kept on until the end. She knew, as i knew, that you don't stop a story half done. You keep on going, through heartbreak and pain and fear, and times there is a happy ending, and times there isn't. Don't matter. You don't cut a flower half through and then wait and watch as it slowly shrivels to death. And you don't stop a story before you reach the end. - A Creature of Moonlight — Rebecca Hahn

Many producers state without blinking that the audience wants a happy ending. They say this because up-ending films tend to make more money than down-ending films. The reason for this is that a small percentage of the audience won't go to any film that might give it an unpleasant experience. Generally their excuse is that they have enough tragedy in their lives. But if we were to look closely, we'd discover that they not only avoid negative emotions in movies, they avoid them in life. Such people think that happiness means never suffering, so they never feel anything deeply. The depth of our joy is in direct proportion to what we've suffered. Holocaust survivors, for example, don't avoid dark films. They go because such stories resonate with their past and are deeply cathartic. — Robert McKee

Stories are as unique as the people who tell them, and the best stories are in which the ending is a surprise. — Nicholas Sparks

Positive means feeling enjoyment, suspense, amusement, and the satisfaction of what psychologists call belief affirmation - stories turning out as readers believe they should. That requires more than just a happy ending. It means affirming readers' beliefs and validating their morals. — Donald Maass

If we own the story then we can write the ending. — Brene Brown

Knowing someone's story helps to make the patient more real, and it makes the job more personal. The shared narratives of others' lives incorporate and become stories about us. I feel myself to be a part of a stranger's story, when it is shared with me, and passing it on feels like my sharing of a parable we've all heard- we know the plot, even the climax and the ending. Only the names have changed, or the costumes, or the settings, but the story is the same and is this: we are all vulnerable; we are all a little bit crazy; we are all funny, entertaining, delicate, bold, horrible, and fantastic. We are all, in our unique and individual ways, as equally and universally fucked up as the next person. Every one of us. Theres comfort in knowing this. — Pamela Baker

A happy ending is always possible if you are willing to keep the story moving to get there. — Alan Cohen

Long Gone is the type of book that should come with a warning. It's a compulsively readable, highly addictive story. The ending will leave you breathless. — Karin Slaughter

Short stories that's all it's ever been Don't you worry 'bout the ending Babe, before we begin I have seen the sun That's behind the rain I have felt the joy That's behind the pain. — Harry Chapin

It's precisely the disappointing stories, which have no proper ending and therefore no proper meaning, that sound true to life. — Max Frisch

When we deny our stories, They define us. When we own our stories, we get to write the ending. — Brene Brown

It's not about finding Mr Right, or that sort of conventional ending, but I do want my characters to have hope - and that's what I do with all my stories. — Cecelia Ahern

Just cuz you get to the end doesn't mean you know what happened. — Karen Tei Yamashita

Maybe like the never-ending stories within stories of the One Thousand and One Nights, life is dream within dream all the way through? — H.M. Forester

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

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

It's hard to say where a story begins and ends. You have to draw an arbitrary line somewhere. Somewhere between perception and reality. Between what is spoken and what is heard. Between what is written and what is edited out. I know this, you can't have an ending without a beginning. Even if they are really just random pieces of the middle that tend to stand out. Staccato notes on the page. Points on a circle. — Thomas Lloyd Qualls

It was a long story, and like most of the stories in the world, never finished. There was an ending - there always is - but the story went on past the ending - it always does. — Jeanette Winterson

Follow your gut, Storyteller, it will lead to your happy ending. — Isabel Greenberg

Perhaps this is the purpose of detective investigations, real and fictional
to transform sensation, horror and grief into a puzzle, and then to solve the puzzle, to make it go away. 'The detective story,' observed Raymond Chandler in 1949, 'is a tragedy with a happy ending.' A storybook detective starts by confronting us with a murder and ends by absolving us of it. He clears us of guilt. He relieves us of uncertainty. He removes us from the presence of death. — Kate Summerscale

Nobody said it had to be a story with an ending all neatly tied up like some ridiculous fairy tale. This story's true, and true stories don't have endings, because things just keep going. — Kate Milford

In a way, our stories have the same beginning and ending -- we all are born, and we all die. What happens in the middle sets us apart. — Shon Mehta

I enjoy a third act, and I like stories with ending. A lot of my frustration with serialized storytelling is a lot of shows don't have a third act. They have an endless second act, and then they find out it's their last year and often have to hustle to invent a third act, but they were never necessarily organically meaning to begin with. — Nic Pizzolatto

The fact is that HBO is doing the kind of films and the kind of stories that the movie industry used to do. You look at a lot of the specialty sections of studios that have gone under ... and there's no doubt in my mind why filmmakers and screenwriters and actors are ending up at a place like HBO. They do it better than anybody. — Kevin Spacey

Stories make sense when so much around us is senseless, and perhaps what makes them most comforting is that while life goes on and pain goes on, stories do us the favor of ending. — John Hodgman

It's a funny thing about stories. It doesn't feel like you make them up, more like you find them. You type and type and you know you haven't got it yet, because somewhere out there, there's that perfect thing
the unexpected ending that was always going to happen. That place you've always been heading for, but never expected to go. — Steven Moffat

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

I would like to believe this is a story I'm telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it. Those who can believe that such stories are only stories have a better chance. If it's a story I'm telling, then I have control over the ending. Then there will be an ending, to the story, and real life will come after it. I can pick up where I left off. — Margaret Atwood

The moral of this story is that sometimes, you can attempt to make all the difference in the world, and it still is like trying to stem the tide with a sieve. The moral of this story is that no matter how much we try, no matter how much we want it ... some stories just don't have a happy ending. — Jodi Picoult

How do you get the happy ending? John Irving ought to know. One of my favorite authors, Irving writes these multigenerational epics of fiction that somehow work out in the end. How does he do it? He says, 'I always begin with the last sentence ; then I work my way backwards, through the plot, to where the story should begin.' Thst sounds like a lot of work, especially compared to the fantasy that great writers sit down and just go where the story takes them. Irving lets us know that good stories and happy endings are more intentional than that.
Most 20 something's can't write the last sentence of their lives. But when pressed, they usually can identify things they want in their 30s or 40s or 60s -or things they don't want- and work backward from there. This is how you have your own multigenerational epic with a happy ending. This is how you live your life in real time. — Meg Jay

I believe with all my heart God's Story has a happy ending ... But not yet, not necessarily yet. It takes faith to hold on to that in the face of the great burden of experience, which seems to prove otherwise. — Elisabeth Elliot

Patti Callahan Henry seamlessly combines mystery, family love, and personal journey all in one engrossing tale. From the intriguing beginning to the touching ending, The Stories We Tell is filled with the warmth, heart and compassion that have become the trademark of her novels. — Diane Chamberlain

The stories that I want to tell, especially as a director, don't necessarily have a perfect ending because, the older you get, the more you appreciate a good day versus a happy ending. You understand that life continues on the next day; the reality of things is what happens tomorrow. — Drew Barrymore

The whole 'starting with stories, ending with novels' thing, it's probably too ingrained in the industry and the psyche to change it. — Stephen Graham Jones

Sure, she was going to turn eighteen in less than a year. She'd been in the system long enough to know that eighteenth birthdays weren't marked by celebrations. When the checks stopped coming, she'd be on her own. "Aging out" of foster care meant becoming homeless. She'd heard stories of kids ending up in jail and hospital emergency rooms, selling drugs, living on welfare and food stamps. How desperate did a person have to become before they broke the law to survive? For now, things were good, and she didn't want to mess that up. — Ellen Marie Wiseman

The term - 'Fairy-Tales' is so ironical in itself, when I sometimes sit to write love stories with a happy ending, it usually drags me into a dilemma whether, I should even begin with a love story at first place or not? Because honestly, I haven't seen many of them reaching climax, most of them just die out in the mid. Then comes the concept of fairy tales or what we say 'fiction', where nothing is impossible!
But over time, if I've realized something, it is that there's no such term called fiction when it comes to reality! Its harsh, in-your-face-sarcastic, ironical and highly irrational. You can't expect what's coming up next, and how it's going to blow you. In the real life, the entire meaning of fiction ceases to exist. Conclusively, we writers, deal with harsh reality and write lively fictions, this job in itself is so ironical but, that's life ... — Mehek Bassi

Just because something is over doesn't mean it wasn't incredibly beautiful. Because another lesson I've learned is not all stories have a happy ending and you have to learn how to deal with that. — Taylor Swift

I love stories with a happy ending, Inspector Me said. — Derek Landy

I became a reporter because I never found out the ending to my own story. Thirty years after Ben's abduction, the only answers I could find were for others, the victims, or those they left behind. The crime beat was a natural for me. The people I wrote about were the most fragile, the most broken, and they needed the most answers. I pieced together the frayed strands that had once been their lives, not always happy, but better off than where they ended up. I had to tell their stories. I felt like I owed the victims at least that...Julia Gooden, THE LAST TIME SHE SAW HIM — Jane Haseldine

All stories have a beginning, a middle and an ending, and if they're any good, the ending is a beginning. — James Clavell

I want my stories to be something about life that causes people to say, not, oh, isn't that the truth, but to feel some kind of reward from the writing, and that doesn't mean that it has to be a happy ending or anything, but just that everything the story tells moves the reader in such a way that you feel you are a different person when you finish. — Alice Munro

If you can see a world within a portrait I would be happy with that. I don't want to tell the story with a painting, though. I'm trying to get away from the story- from the beginning and the ending. — Danny Fox

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

We loved it. We loved how slow it was. We love that it took forever. Actually, we never wanted it to end. We loved the jungle, the rafts, the ridiculous armor and helmets ... I think most of all we loved that it didn't have a happy ending for anyone. The whole time we were sort of expecting that someone would survive because that's how stories work: Even if everything is a total disaster, someone lives to tell the tale. But not with Aguirre, the Wrath of God. Hell no. Everyone dies. That's awesome. — Jesse Andrews

wonder why I keep writing these chapter introductions. I spend a lot of time in these stories not actually writing these stories. There must be something to it. Something I don't want to admit. These are another delay. To keep myself from writing the inevitable. As long as I'm waxing fanciful about bunnies and bazookas, I don't have to make progress toward the ending. I don't want to get there. Despite claiming I'm writing these autobiographies to set the story straight, I don't actually want to do it. Deep down, I'd rather think of myself as a hero. Of course, I'm probably too much of a coward to include this section in the book. — Brandon Sanderson

I hadn't written a love story before and I hadn't written a novel with a happy ending before. — Anna Quindlen

A bitter ending' said Yarvi.
'Many sweet stories have them', said Jaud. — Joe Abercrombie

I want that perfect ending. But I've learned the hard way, that some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle and end. My life has not been about knowing or figuring everything out. It's been about having to deal with change, about taking a moment and making the best of it, even if I knew I'd have to take a big risk. Life is really about trying to move forward without knowing exactly what is going to happen next. — Jose N. Harris

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

We either own our stories (even the messy ones), or we stand outside of them - denying our vulnerabilities and imperfections, orphaning the parts of us that don't fit in with who/what we think we're supposed to be, and hustling for other people's approval of our worthiness. Perfectionism is exhausting because hustling is exhausting. It's a never-ending performance. — Brene Brown

We speak of stories ending, when in truth it is we who end. The stories go on and on. — Jacqueline Carey

It gets you thinking about all the parts in a story we never see"
he cleared his throat
"the parts around the edges. You bring someone like that boy so alive before us and there he is set loose in our world so that we can't stop thinking of him. But then the report is over, the boy disappears. He was just a boy in a story and we never know the ending, we never get to close the book. It makes you wonder what happens to the people in them after the story stops
all the stories you've reported for instance. Where are they all now? — Sarah Blake

The solution, of necessity, was going to be entirely up to him. Knowing it was a trifle over dramatic, but considering the mental capabilities of the two involved, he drew his sword. "We are all now going directly to the chapel," he announced, "and the two of you are going to get married." He pointed at the splintered door with the sword. "Now march!"he commanded.
And so it was that one of the great tragic love stories of all time came at last to a happy ending. Mandorallen and his Neria were married that very afternoon,with Garion quite literally standing over them with a flaming sword to insure that no last-minute hitches could interrupt. — David Eddings

I've got a head full of stories you still need to hear, starting with my ribs, ending with my whole life. — Bonnie Jo Campbell

Endings are the hardest part. I find there's a great relief that at the end of every episode, every hour of TV you produce, while you want a proper and satisfying ending, it doesn't have to end The Story, in capital letters. — Vince Gilligan

I've realized that in all the great stories, even if there's a happily-ever-after ending, there's something sad. — Emma Thompson

I've always thought that, as a romance writer, I had the best job in the world. I sit around all day making up emotion-drenched, conflict-laden stories that push my heroes and heroines to the edge of sanity. Then I give them a happy ending. — Ruth Glick

Then I realize we can't feel guilty. We should be thankful we're standing here, together, because life doesn't always give you a happy ending. But it has this time - for us - and if we allowed our guilt and sorrow to dictate our lives, there'd be no point in living. People would never heal, life would never move forward, and our stories would never be told. — Ashley Drew

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

There are no interesting stories in these parts, just weary, never-ending tales of tragedy and woe. And toothlessness. — Mia Sheridan

Winning is an abstract concept. There is no winning in real life. Winning is just a device for storytellers to conveniently end a tale, but everyone knows that real stories - real lives - only end in death. But the dead don't win anything except the release from the never-ending game, the never-ending race. There is no winning, but that doesn't mean you have to lose. You can't lose if you refuse to play, if you refuse to fight, if you refuse the race the sun day after day. Don't surrender, because to surrender is to lose. Don't give up, because to give up is to lose. When you refuse to fight, there is no surrender. When you refuse to race the sun, you can finally stop to appreciate the light it brings to the earth each and every day. — Ilia Bera

Ghosts are a metaphor that can be interpreted so many different ways. There's no ending to what you can do. You can make it a fun ghost story. You can make it a deeply disturbing, psychological ghost story. — Guillermo Del Toro