“True stories seldom have endings.
I don't want a happy ending, I want more story.”
Source: Fly by Night
Interview with Don Swaim (1986)
Interview with Don Swaim (1986)
“Now begin in the middle, and later learn the beginning; the end will take care of itself.”
“A story should have a beginning, a middle and an end, but not necessarily in that order.”
Variant: A story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end... but not necessarily in that order.
No Country for Old Men (2005)
Source: The Five People You Meet in Heaven (2003)
“Every story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Not necessarily in that order.”
(29 January 2005)
Unfit for Mass Consumption (blog entries), 2005
Context: At some point, I stopped and made the following note to myself: I have never finished a story. I'm beginning to see that now. I don't think that there's ever a point where a story or novel is just exactly right. There are only finer and lesser degrees of refinement, and even those are probably subjective. You might think it's perfect for a time, but read it a year or five years later, and you'll see you were mistaken. There's always something I can make better, every time I read one of my stories. Usually there are dozens of somethings. And I once thought this wasn't true, that a story reached a certain point and beyond that point you were only changing things, making them different, not making them better. Indeed, I thought, beyond a point, you risk screwing it all up. I don't think that anymore. You risk screwing it all up right from the start, and no story is ever as perfect as it can be. Perfection is always one or two polishes away from the writer.
“I don't want to end up
In a room all alone
Don't want to end up someone
That I don't even know.”
King's Highway
Lyrics, Into The Great Wide Open (1991)
