What is not started today is never finished tomorrow.
When asked for advice by beginners, I always stress that. Know your ending, I say, or the river of your story may finally sink into the desert sands and never reach the sea.
Toil without song is like a weary journey without an end.
To finish is sadness to a writer—a little death. He puts the last word down and it is done. But it isn’t really done. The story goes on and leaves the writer behind, for no story is ever done.
To finish a work? To finish a picture? What nonsense! To finish it means to be through with it, to kill it, to rid it of its soul, to give it its final blow: the most unfortunate one for the painter as well as for the picture.
The end of a story must be stronger rather than weaker than the beginning; since it is the end which contains the denouement or culmination, and which will leave the strongest impression upon the reader.
The end is near. I hear a noise at the door, as of some immense slippery body lumbering against it. It shall not find me. God, that hand! The window! The window!
Martyrdom does not end something, it only a beginning.
Many people take no care of their money till they come nearly to the end of it, and others do just the same with their time.
It’s just natural, it’s not a great disaster. People keep talking about it like it’s The End of The Earth. It’s only a rock group that split up, it’s nothing important. You know, you have all the old records there if you want to reminisce.
It’s easier to resist at the beginning than at the end.
If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.
