J. D. Salinger Quotes

The challenge is always to find the good place to end the book. The rule I follow with myself is that every book should end where the next book would logically begin. I know that some readers wish that literally all of the threads would be neatly tied off and snipped, but life just doesn't work that way.

With films, you get to develop a set of characters, and then, at the end of the film, you have to throw them away.

I've had such an incredible arc, so it made sense to me, creatively, that we've told Laurel's story. It has come to an end in the 'Arrow'-verse.

The test of any good fiction is that you should care something for the characters; the good to succeed, the bad to fail. The trouble with most fiction is that you want them all to land in hell, together, as quickly as possible.

It's often the case that the most strained moments in books are the very beginning and the very end - the getting in and the getting out. The ending, especially: it's awkward, as if the writer doesn't know when the book is over and nervously says it all again.

I can never kind of fathom a character's journey beyond the moment when you go to black, any more than when people ask me what Jason Patric did with the tape recorder at the end of 'Narc,' you know what I mean? Even in 'Blood, Guts,' like, what happens down the road with these characters?

For me the end of a book is just as exciting as it is for a reader.

More than working toward the book's climax, I work toward the denouement. As a reader and a writer, that's where I find the real satisfaction.

It's a responsibility of the writer to get the reader out of the story somehow.

No, I won't ever write another 'Lily Bard.' I said everything I had to say about Lily.

You don't have to resolve every problem of the book at the end, but you do have to resolve some.

My characters - no, make that most characters - are seeking the shelter of narrative resolution, a place of quiet and grace.

The endings to me are the key moment in 'Weekend' and '45 Years.' I know how I want my gut to feel at the ending. Even if I can't articulate in words what that feeling is, I'm trying to find ways to get there.

Pay-per-views bring conclusion to storylines and what has been going on from television. It is important to give viewers satisfactory pay off over storylines and that is why pay-per-views are important.

It doesn't matter whether characters are real people or not; if they're not vivid on the page, then the reader doesn't care about them that much, and, if the reader doesn't care about them that much, then they don't care what happens to them.

Happy endings must come at the end of something,' the Walrus pointed out. 'If they happen in the middle of a story, or an adventure, or the like, all they do is cheer things up for awhile.

Comedy always works better when you're tracking the story and you care about the characters. That's why there's a lot of movies where there's not a ton of jokes, but you get huge laughs because there's a moment of relief.

You're trying to play an archetype on one hand and a character on the other, so I felt insanely frustrated, right up until the last shot, and then it ended.

One nourishes one's created characters with one's own substance: it's rather like the process of gestation. To give the character life, or to give him back life, it is of course necessary to fortify him by contributing something of one's own humanity, but it doesn't follow from that that the character is I, the writer, or that I am the character. The two entities remain distinct.

Character is half the reason we read. We're excited because of the plot, but we care because of the characters.

If a writer is true to his characters they will give him his plot. Observations must play second fiddle to integrity.

I really become the characters when I'm writing them. I'll become one or two of them more than others, I'm consistent that way.

If a character dies, you should feel that. If a character accomplishes something, you should feel that. That's where you try to find that balance. It's impossible to articulate, as you go through it. You just have to recognize it.

I do realize that the reader needs some form of resolution. Sometimes I think of it almost like writing a musical score where things have to harmonize and certain lines have to come to a close.

It can sometimes make people fold into themselves and kind of run away, but I think in this case these characters are being forced to face issues and emotions, feelings, that they have. So it kind of forces them to face it head on, which I think is a really interesting dynamic. And I think it should be interesting and probably a good thing for the relationship.