Quotes about end page 21
Diana Peterfreund (1979) American writer
Source: For Darkness Shows the Stars
“We'd be fools not to ride this strange torpedo all the way out to the end.”
Hunter S. Thompson book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Source: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
“You've got to go through it to get to the end of it.”
Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire
Greasy Sae, p. 12
Source: The Hunger Games trilogy, Catching Fire (2009)
Patrick Rothfuss book The Name of the Wind
Source: The Name of the Wind (2007), Chapter 45, “Interlude—Some Tavern Tale” (p. 333)
Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer
Illusions : The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (1977)
“Emotions are the end result, the sum, of things learned”
Terry Goodkind book Confessor
Source: Confessor
“In the end you should always do the right thing even if it's hard.”
Nicholas Sparks book The Last Song
Source: The Last Song
“Sure, everything is ending," Jules said, "but not yet.”
Jennifer Egan A Visit from the Goon Squad
Source: A Visit from the Goon Squad
“I just want the pain to end.”
Julie Anne Peters (1952) American writer
Source: By the Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead
“En Ma Fin Est Ma Commencement - In my end is my beginning.”
Philippa Gregory book The Other Queen
Source: The Other Queen
“If you want a happy ending, it just depends on where you close the book!”
Orson Welles (1915–1985) American actor, director, writer and producer
From the published screenplay for "The Big Brass Ring" (Santa Barbara, Calif.: Santa Teresa Press, 1987)
Variant: If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.
Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist
Interview on CNBC http://www.cnbc.com/id/43670783 (1 July 2011)
Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted
Source: Girl, Interrupted (1994)
“The cow is of the bovine ilk;
One end is moo, the other, milk.”
Ogden Nash (1902–1971) American poet
"The Cow".
Source: Free Wheeling (1931)
Cormac McCarthy book No Country for Old Men
Source: No Country for Old Men (2005)
Context: I aint got all that many regrets. I could imagine lots of things that you might think would make a man happier. I think by the time you're grown you're as happy as you're goin to be. You'll have good times and bad times, but in the end you'll be about as happy as you was before. Or as unhappy. I've knowed people that just never did get the hang of it.
Source: Old Kingdom series (The Abhorsen Trilogy), Lirael: Daughter of the Clayr (2001), pp. 359-360.
“This was but a prelude;
where books are burnt
human-beings will be burnt
in the end”
Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) German poet, journalist, essayist, and literary critic
“You think you know how this story is going to end, but you don't. Trust me, I was there. I know.”
Christopher Moore book Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal
Biff, in Ch. 1
Source: Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal (2002)
“If it's bitter at the start, then it's sweeter in the end.”
Madonna (1958) American singer, songwriter, and actress
Annie Barrows book The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
Source: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
“sup? i'm working. on what? my suicide note. i can't figure out how to end it. lol”
David Levithan book Will Grayson, Will Grayson
Source: Will Grayson, Will Grayson
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer
As quoted in Huston Smith, "Aldous Huxley--A Tribute," The Psychedelic Review, (1964) Vol I, No.3, (Aldous Huxley Memorial Issue), p. 264-5
Source: Moksha: Writings on Psychedelics & the Visionary Experience
“It begins in delight and ends in wisdom. The figure is the same for love.”
Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet
The Figure a Poem Makes (1939)
Variant: A poem begins in delight and ends in wisdom.
Context: It should be of the pleasure of a poem itself to tell how it can. The figure a poem makes. It begins in delight and ends in wisdom. The figure is the same for love.
Brian P. Cleary (1959) American writer
Source: You Oughta Know By Now
E. Lockhart (1967) American writer of novels as E. Lockhart (mainly for teenage girls) and of picture books under real name Emily J…
Source: Real Live Boyfriends: Yes. Boyfriends, Plural. If My Life Weren't Complicated, I Wouldn't Be Ruby Oliver
James Baldwin book Nobody Knows My Name
Source: "Faulkner and Desegregation" in Partisan Review (Fall 1956); republished in Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son (1961)
Context: Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety. And at such a moment, unable to see and not daring to imagine what the future will now bring forth, one clings to what one knew, or dreamed that one possessed. Yet, it is only when a man is able, without bitterness or self-pity, to surrender a dream he has long cherished or a privilege he has long possessed that he is set free — he has set himself free — for higher dreams, for greater privileges.
“All ends are temporary and all life is born from death.”
Christopher Pike (1954) American author Kevin Christopher McFadden
Source: Evil Thirst
“I suspect this is all gonna end in screaming and drowning”
Scott Lynch book Red Seas Under Red Skies
Source: Red Seas Under Red Skies
“He was saying that the end of the world wasn't an accident; it was a joke.”
Holly Black book The Coldest Girl in Coldtown
Source: The Coldest Girl in Coldtown
“A good marriage is where both people feel like they're getting the better end of the deal.”
Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist
Source: Joe Jones
Elizabeth Kostova book The Historian
Source: The Historian (2005), Ch. 9
Context: There is survival and survival, the historian learns to his grief. The very worst impulses of humankind can survive generations, centuries, even millennia. And the best of our individual efforts can die with us at the end of a single lifetime.
Context: My dear and unfortunate successor:
I shall conclude my account as rapidly as possible, since you must draw from it vital information if we are both to — ah, to survive, at least, and to survive in a state of goodness and mercy. There is survival and survival, the historian learns to his grief. The very worst impulses of humankind can survive generations, centuries, even millennia. And the best of our individual efforts can die with us at the end of a single lifetime.
“It does not do to neglect the gods of a place, whoever they may be. In the end, they are all one.”
Mary Stewart Mary Stewart's Merlin Trilogy
Source: Mary Stewart's Merlin Trilogy
“If you're at the end of your rope… untie the knot in your heart.”
Cooper Edens (1945) American writer
Source: If You're Afraid of the Dark, Remember the Night Rainbow/Add One More Star to the Night
“Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.”
"Fire and Ice" (1923)
General sources
Context: Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
Francis Bacon book The Advancement of Learning
Book I, v, 8
The Advancement of Learning (1605)
Source: The Advancement Of Learning
Context: The two ways of contemplation are not unlike the two ways of action commonly spoken of by the ancients: the one plain and smooth in the beginning, and in the end impassable; the other rough and troublesome in the entrance, but after a while fair and even. So it is in contemplation: If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.
Tad Williams Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn
Author’s Warning
Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, The Dragonbone Chair (1988)
Haruki Murakami book A Wild Sheep Chase
Source: A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel (1982)
Context: I watched an old American submarine movie on television. The creaking plot had the captain and first officer constantly at each other’s throat. The submarine was a fossil, and one guy had claustrophobia. But all that didn’t stop everything from working out well in the end. It was an everything-works-out-in-the-end-so-maybe-war’s-not-so-bad-after-all sort of film. One of these days they’ll be making a film where the whole human race gets wiped out in a nuclear war, but everything works out in the end.
Anne Bishop (1955) American fiction writer
Source: Daughter of the Blood
Louis L'Amour (1908–1988) Novelist, short story writer
“I bought a house on a one-way dead-end road. I don’t know how I got there.”
Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author
“The rivalry ends here," [Percy] said. "I love you, Wise Girl.”
Rick Riordan book The Blood of Olympus
Variant: The rivalry ends here," Percy said. "I love you, Wise Girl.
Source: The Blood of Olympus
“Change is hardest at the beginning, messiest in the middle and best at the end.”
Robin S. Sharma (1965) Canadian self help writer
Source: The Leader Who Had No Title: A Modern Fable on Real Success in Business and in Life