Story Ending Quotes & Sayings

Look at The King's Speech. For one thing, you can look at it: no lens caps left on there. What's more, the story is simple. The world's most important man can't speak properly, so he gets taught to speak properly. But then disaster strikes! It looks like he might not be able to speak properly after all. Finally, in a triumphant climax, he speaks properly. It's a feelgood ending for everybody, apart from the 450,000 Britons killed in the war he just announced on the radio. — Charlie Brooker

It was wonderful, a stunning happy ending to what began as another tragic rock & roll story, as if Bob Dylan had been arrested in Miami for jacking off in a seedy little XXX theater while stroking the spine of a fat young boy. — Hunter S. Thompson

In which it is proved that, notwithstanding their names' ending in OS and IS, the heroes of the story which we are about to have the honor to relate to our readers have nothing mythological about them. — Alexandre Dumas

films like The Never-Ending Story (1984), Stranger than Fiction (2006), and The Adjustment Bureau (2011). Have you seen any of these films? Then you understand hermeneutics. In each case, the story revolves around a protagonist engaging his own life as a fictional story being written either in this world or in another, seemingly by someone else. As he reads and interprets the text of his life, however, he discovers that its story or plot changes. He discovers the circle or loop of hermeneutics. He discovers that as he engages his cultural script as text creatively and critically he is rereading and rewriting himself. He is changing the story. — Whitley Strieber

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

I had never written anything before in my life except maybe in high school when I wrote a short story, and my mother had to put an ending on that. — Nicole Jordan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Historically, a story about people inside impressive buildings ignoring or even taunting people standing outside shouting at them turns out to be a story with an unhappy ending. — Lemony Snicket

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

I didn't want someone saying it was going to be okay. See, that's the worst thing you can do to a girl. Say it's going to be okay when she knows it's not, when she's knows that the only real ending to the story is heartache. — Rachel Van Dyken

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

Before we do, I suggest you take a break. If you need to go to the bathroom, this is a good time. If you're sleepy, go to bed and save the next chapter for tomorrow. For the magician's story, you must have all your wits about you. No wandering minds allowed. — Pseudonymous Bosch

Maybe you shouldn't blame anyone, but accept that this is your sister's story, and the ending belongs to her. — Adriana Trigiani

Why our story have no ending? — Shivi

This story has a happy ending. — Yann Martel

An ending to my story," he said. "My story's ended ten times already, and yet it never stops. The end keeps coming for me, and yet it takes everyone else. Orphans, friends, commanding officers, I outlast them all. — Adam Johnson

I would figure out, later, how to explain to my boss that, for me, Delia will never be a story, but a happy ending. — Jodi Picoult

Phillip Murray and Wanda Saxton meet in the last scene under the rainy awning, their wrong wife and fiance finally story-lined away, and walk out together into the downpour - we know from the first scene, Christmas eve, that both of them like walking in the rain but don't have anybody who will do it with them - and it's the miracle of the ending. — Daniel Handler

The Christmas story is penmanship of the most brilliant sort, where God crafted a beginning that would never be subject to an ending. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

The most-asked question when someone describes a novel, movie or short story to a friend probably is, 'How does it end?' Endings carry tremendous weight with readers; if they don't like the ending, chances are they'll say they didn't like the work. Failed endings are also the most common problems editors have with submitted works. — Nancy Kress

Did you think that if you created a fairy tale and made all of us play along, made me defeat a monster and become a hero ... you'd have a happy ending, like a princess in a hayloft story? — April Genevieve Tucholke

Judging a story by the ending alone, or life by its death alone, is as pointless as judging a long hike through the mountains by the fact that when you get back to where you parked your car, there's a pit toilet full of you know what and beer cans. — Emily Henry

She wrapped her arms around his neck and gazed into the face of the man she was going to spend the rest of her life with. "Just promise to love me forever."
"This is one story that's going to have a happy ending," he told her, and he lowered his mouth to hers. — Shannon Stacey

You are a writer - you write one chapter and go on to the next and the next and so forth. You manage the story, you control the ending, no one else. Think about it. The only difference between life and fiction is you cannot rewrite the beginning, but the ending is always within reach. While you write you think how the story will end. Do you make it an ending with no regrets? — Patrick Timm

The more mistakes, the better the story afterwards. Especially if there's a happy ending. — Felicia Day

Jesus is building his Church, not only by constitutions and codes, but by shaping hearts and minds to his way of life. We are a family, not a firm, scattered and yet gathered. Biblical equality is not the endgame; it is one of the means to God's big ending: all things redeemed, all things restored. Jesus feminism is only one thread in God's beautiful woven story of redemption. Begin here: right at the feet of Jesus. Look to Love, and yes, our Jesus - he will guide you in your steps, one after another, in these small ways until you come at last to love the whole world. — Sarah Bessey

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

- Have you ever written the ending of the story first and then the rest of it?
- Hell no, I've never had an orgasm before having sex. — Enkelejd Lamaj

Then I understood that when someone begins to tell you her story, you are entwined together. Perhaps even more so if the ending hasn't been divulged. — Alice Hoffman

You try spending six months sitting at somebody's bedside, waiting for them to die and then tell me that the happy-ending love story isn't one of God's good gifts. — Susan Elizabeth Phillips

It is the story that matters not just the ending. — Paul Lockhart

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

Probably a good idea, let me know how it ends"
"I already know how it ends"
"You read the ending first?"
"I always read the ending before I commit to the whole book."
"If you know how it ends, why read the book?"
"I don't read for the ending. I read for the story". — Jayne Ann Krentz

Hearing a story awakens the mythic story living in each of us. It places us in a "mythic condition" that reconnects us to the core imagination and living story at the center of our soul. Being touched by myth carries us to the center where the world is always ending and always beginning again. — Michael Meade

I was a callow boy, and then a man, good and bad. Now at last I'm the hero. I am the one to root for in the never-ending war story of our marriage. — Gillian Flynn

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

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

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

She is a story with no ending, happy or sad. She can never belong to anything mortal enough to want her. Most — Peter S. Beagle

In the end, notwithstanding a surreal detour in the 1970s, Patricia led the life she for which she was destined back in Hillsborough. The story of Patricia Hearst, as extraordinary as it once was, had a familiar, even predictable ending. She did not turn into a revolutionary. She turned into her mother. — Jeffrey Toobin

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

The fable of us had been rewritten. With a spin that had exposed the truth. Instead of the happily never after we'd been dealt or with the happily ever after that was a lie, we were retelling the ending. Boone and Clara - happily even after. It was a great story. The greatest one I'd ever heard. — Nicole Williams

Epic love story has only love between two people but do not have 'they lived happily ever after — Santosh Avvannavar

Sometimes the ending of a documented story is really just a new beginning to the unpublished adventure yet to be discovered — Jes Fuhrmann

Writing a book is just reading one, except you get to choose the perfect ending everytime! — Jennifer Squyres

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

You can hope all you want for a happy ending, but sometimes, like it or not, the guy writing your story is working on a tragedy; you may not even be the main character. — Shalom Auslander

..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

And then she woke up and it was all a dream.' It was just about the worst ending you could have to any story. — Terry Pratchett

Two birds locked inside a cage, we aren't supposed to last,
And I guess we both could blame it on our past.
But I'm out of excuses if you're done with pretending,
I'm ready to start the story that doesn't have an ending. — Kandi Steiner

And the weird weird thing about this story of Angela's Ring was that it didn't even have a point to it, no happy ending, no lesson to be learnt.
It was like one person's cry of pain, echoing out on and on and on trough the generations, even after that person was long long dead. — Chris Beckett

First, I spit out a mouthful of dirt. Then, I screamed at the sky. "That's it! I've had it! Everything is trying to kill me! All I did was make one stupid wish. Aladdin made three. I'm the hero of this story, so where's my happy ending, already? It's not fair."

Rexi bent over, trying to catch her breath. "You know what's not fair? Spending Muse Day as a toad just because the kitchen ran out of frog legs. Or being volunteered for this little journey. So build a bridge, then make like a billy goat and get over it already because no one is listening. — Betsy Schow

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

If it were up to me ... " and then the words pound, desperate and hard, "I'd write this story differently." ...
"Just that maybe ... maybe you don't want to change the story, because you don't know what a different ending holds."
The words I choked out that dying, ending day, echo. Pierce. There's a reason I am not writing the story and God is. He knows how it all works out, where it all leads, what it all means.
I don't. — Ann Voskamp

If the ending is not happy, the story is not finished. — J.P. Leck

And the story of love is a long sad tale ending in graves. — Jack Kerouac

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

If a happy ending is what you're after, stop the story where it makes you smile, or cry for laughter. In life, it's the rare sweetness to have tears of joy, or painless endings. People feel. It's what they know, and it's why i write. — Mark T. Barnes

If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story. — Orson Welles

There is this strangeness of a life story having no shape - or more accurately, nothing but its present - until it has its ending; and then suddenly the whole trajectory is visible. — James Wood

What I've started I must finish. I've gone too far to turn back. Regardless of what may happen, I have to go forward. — Michael Ende

There is no list of rules. There is one rule. The rule is: there are no rules. Happiness comes from living as you need to, as you want to. As your inner voice tells you to. Happiness comes from being who you actually are instead of who you think you are supposed to be. Being traditional is not traditional anymore. It's funny that we still think of it that way. Normalize your lives, people. You don't want a baby? Don't have one. I don't want to get married? I won't. You want to live alone? Enjoy it. You want to love someone? Love someone. Don't apologize. Don't explain. Don't ever feel less than. When you feel the need to apologize or explain who you are, it means the voice in your head is telling you the wrong story. Wipe the slate clean. And rewrite it. No fairy tales. Be your own narrator. And go for a happy ending. One foot in front of the other. You will make it. — Shonda Rhimes

Sometimes a story just needs an ending, and I used to not be a creative enough person to think of an ending to a romantic story that isn't a wedding or a death. This story didn't end in fireworks, because the truth is, fireworks are something from my twenties. I could have made fireworks, but I chose to make a nuanced memory of a person who is neither a hero nor a villain in my life. All I had to do now was move on. — Mindy Kaling

I like to compare the holiday season with the way a child listens to a favorite story. The pleasure is in the familiar way the story begins, the anticipation of familiar turns it takes, the familiar moments of suspense, and the familiar climax and ending. — Fred Rogers

The legacy of the fairy story in my brain is that everything will work out. In fiction it would be very hard for me, as a writer, to give a bad ending to a good character, or give a good ending to a bad character. That's probably not a very postmodern thing to say. — Kate Atkinson

Everything you write makes you better. But if you really need a tip, here's one: a good story begins in opposition to its ending. That means you work out how it finishes first, and then begin the story as far away from that point - in terms of character development - as you can. — Chris Wooding

We only have one story. All novels, all poetry are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil. — John Steinbeck

It has been said by many that a true love story has no happy ending simply because the truest of loves never ends. It is immortal. This is the kind of love that lives forever in your heart as a feeling you will always feel, a place you can always return to. — Michele L. Rivera

Sophie: "For the Create-A-Tale Competition, your story ended with Snow White eaten by vultures and Cinderella drowning her-self in a tub."
Agatha: "I thought it was a better ending. — Soman Chainani

She'd known it her whole life. It was the one thing she was certain of. That someday, everyone she loved would die. Everything she loved would crumble to ruin. It was the price of life. It was the price of love. It was the only ending for every true story. — Martha Brockenbrough

Every good story needs a good ending. Don't write the beginning of a novel without knowing the end of it. — A.D.Y. Howle

I can't say that the ending of a story is always the best part of the story, and yet there's sort of this implicit idea that the finale is somehow supposed to be the mind-blowing best episode of a show. The question is: Why is that? Why do people make that assumption? — Carlton Cuse

Please tell a story about a girl who gets away."
I would, even if I had to adapt one, even if I had to make one up just for her. "Gets away from what, though?"
"From her fairy godmother. From the happy ending that isn't really happy at all. Please have her get out and run off the page altogether, to somewhere secret where words like 'happy' and 'good' will never find her."
"You don't want her to be happy and good?"
"I'm not sure what's really meant by happy and good. I would like her to be free. Now. Please begin. — Helen Oyeyemi

Not every story has a happy ending, ... but the discoveries of science, the teachings of the heart, and the revelations of the soul all assure us that no human being is ever beyond redemption. The possibility of renewal exists so long as life exists. How to support that possibility in others and in ourselves is the ultimate question. — Gabor Mate

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

I'm going to be super successful one day, and I'm going to write a book. It's going to be a kickass autobiography. And this is how it always happens in the book. This is just that part of the book where the character is going through hard times. This is that sucky part of the story. Just get through a few more pages, and it's going to have an amazing ending. — Ronda Rousey

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

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

A happy ending isn't really the end. It's just the place where you choose to stop telling the story. — Leah Stewart

You've gone far away to a place with no horses and very little grass, and you're studying how to write a story with a happy ending. If you can write that ending for yourself, maybe you can come back. — Jennifer Echols

In life, every ending is just the start of another story. — Julian Barnes

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

We're like meridians, all beginning and ending in the same place. We spread out from the beginning and go our separate ways, over seas and mountains and islands and deserts, each telling our own story, as different as they could possibly be. But in the end we all converge and our ends are as much the same as our beginnings. — Neal Stephenson

1408 Film by Stephen King freak me out, the story also freak me out. But watching the film how is made, how much reverses were shown just terrified me. The ending was suprising! — Deyth Banger

A level of a house, his father has told him, is called a story.
Nathaniel likes that. It makes him feel like may be he is living between the covers of a book himself. Like may be everyone in every home is sure to get a happy ending. — Jodi Picoult

Love is pointless. It's the same sad sad story of with the same inevitable ending of miserable deterioration. — Arnold Arre

That's the tragedy of fairy tales. The whole world puts them on a pedestal. People want their lives to be magical, but what people don't understand is that happiness is sacrificed. There is so much more to the story than what is written. The Cinderella you think she's so unfortunate with her mean sisters and stepmom. You think she deserves a happy ending with a prince, but the twenty-page journey is all you see. You learn little about who she is. What if Cinderella's just a good actress who has everyone fooled, when really, she sucks. She more than sucks. — Angela Parkhurst

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

Troy sighed with frustration. "Let me get this straight. We're stuck in the story of Romeo and Juliet and we can't get home without a magic charm from Shakespeare's quill, which doesn't exist in this world. However, we might be able to get home when the story ends, but if Romeo and Juliet don't meet, then we don't have a story. More important, we don't have an ending."
Friar Laurence tsk tsked. He placed his speckled hand on Troy's forehead. "Bless you, my son, but a fever has muddled your mind. — Suzanne Selfors

I write the last line, and then I write the line before that. I find myself writing backwards for a while, until I have a solid sense of how that ending sounds and feels. You have to know what your voice sounds like at the end of the story, because it tells you how to sound when you begin. — John Irving

But the people who took the bus didn't experience the city as we experienced the city. The pain made the city more beautiful. The story made us different characters than we would have been if we had skipped the story and showed up at the ending an easier way. — Donald Miller

Even knowing the ending was sad, I wouldn't have deprived myself the beauty of the story. — Sandra Brown

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