Patrick Ness Quotes

The most important thing is how the season ends.

The ending is really the most important part of the movie. If the first hour and 20 minutes is terrific and the last ten minutes stinks, everybody walks out of the theatre and says: 'That was a lousy movie!'

I believe in picking a strong ending.

How a piece ends is very important to me. It's the last chance to leave an impression with the reader, the last shot at 'nailing' it. I love to write ending lines; usually, I know them first and write toward them, but if I knew how they came to me, I wouldn't tell.

The good ending dismisses us with a touch of ceremony and throws a backward light of significance over the story just read. It makes it, as they say, or unmakes it. A weak beginning is forgettable, but the end of a story bulks in the reader's mind like the giant foot in a foreshortened photograph.

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.

An ending was an ending. No matter how many pages of sentences and paragraphs of great stories led up to it, it would always have the last word.

You put books out into the world, and people form their own visuals and images and attachments to characters; those characters become part of them, and they have their feelings about them.

I always want the last line to be really good, which may sound silly, but I want it to be a last pleasing line.

The sound of a kiss is not so loud as that of a cannon, but its echo lasts a great deal longer.

I love a finished speaker, I really, truly do I don't mean one who's polished, I just mean one who's through.

A great song is one that is around even when I'm not.

We're not keen on the idea of the story sharing its valence with the reader. But the reader's own life 'outside' the story changes the story.

It is the job of the novelist to touch the reader.

Now you know the rest of the story.

The biggest regret I have about 'Rubicon' is that we didn't end it. Sometimes you do these shows and you don't have the opportunity to get closure. Stories are supposed to have a beginning, middle and an end.

I enjoy a good cliffhanger. As a reader, I relish that nervous feeling you get when you're engrossed in a story, but in the back of your mind you're aware that there aren't that many pages left. How will it end? Everything can't be wrapped up! This can't end! Then it does, and your heart seems to stop.

In a movie script, you know what the moments are that you really have to hit it out of the park.

People remember the last thing you did.

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.

They always remember the last thing you do. They don't remember the things before.

I will say there is only one caveat as far as 'Logan' goes: I got to the end and went, 'OK, what happens next?' To me, as an audience member, damn. If you can get to the end of the third act of a trilogy and your reaction is 'what the hell happens next,' someone did their job incredibly.

Everyone remembers the last thing you did.

I want to be associated with content and characters that will be embedded in the hearts and minds of people for a long time.

The end of a novel, like the end of a children's dinner-party, must be made up of sweetmeats and sugar-plums.