Story Ending Quotes

When 'Lost' was over, we expected that there'd be some people who'd really like it and other people who wouldn't. The Emmy nominations are an indication to us that there were a fair number of people who did like the way we concluded our story.

When I write a film, all I think about is where the thing ends and how to get the audience there.

It's always easiest for me as a writer if I know I have a great ending. It can make everything else work. If you don't have a good ending, it's the hardest things in the world to come up with one. I always loved the ending of 'The Kite Runner,' and the scenes that are most faithful to the book are the last few scenes.

Don't mistake a good setup for a satisfying conclusion - many beginning writers end their stories when the real story is just ready to begin.

Characters are so important to a story that they actually decide where the story is going. When I write, I know my characters. I know how things are going to end, and I know some important incidents along the way.

I don't begin a novel until I have written, not just the last sentence, but usually, as a result thereof, many of the surrounding final paragraphs, so that in addition to knowing what happens, I know what the voice is.

A society that's addicted to narratives with beginnings, middles, and endings will eventually yearn to end. We just want it to end.

All stories, if continued far enough, end in death.

So now it is time to disassemble the parts of the jigsaw puzzle or to piece another one together, for I find that, having come to the end of my story, my life is just beginning.

I never fixed a story. I didn't make judgments, I let the listener make judgments. When I got to the end of the story, if it had a moral, I let the listener find it.

I choose this story above all others because it's a story I'm struggling to end.

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.

When you're writing a story, you're creating something of an artificial ending.

It was one of those and so they died/the end stories, that made us demigods feels all warm and fuzzy inside.-Percy

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?

I think it's a bit like coming to the end of a book. The plot's in its thickest, all the characters are in a mess, but you can see that there aren't fifty pages left, and you know that the finish can't be far off.

I like books that have razor-sharp plotting that snaps and moves along. It's not about the main character being different at the end. I don't want my main character to be different in the end. I still want him committed to his ideas, to be steadfast, true and loyal.

If a person survives an ordinary span of sixty years or more, there is every chance that his or her life as a shapely story has ended and all that remains to be experienced is epilogue. Life is not over, but the story is.

When I'm writing, I won't know whodunnit until maybe two thirds of the way through. Until then, I know as little as my detective. I just make it up as I go along. It's nerve-wracking, actually. You'll be half through and not know your conclusion. You worry one of these days the ending won't come. I'll be left with only two-thirds of a novel.

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.

I'm from the theater, darling. I want to know what happens at the end.

The most important part of a story is the ending. No one reads a book to get to the middle.

And of the Witch? In the life of a Witch, there is no "after", in the "ever after" of a Witch there is no "happily"; in the story of a Witch, there is no afterword. Of that part that is beyond the life story, beyond the story of the life, there is-alas, or perhaps thank mercy-no telling. She was dead, dead, and gone, and all that was left of her was the carapace of her reputation for malice.

I do like to wrap things up and leave some things to the readers' imagination.

When asked for advice by beginners. Know your ending, I say, or the river of your story may finally sink into the desert sands and never reach the sea.