To come up with the ending to a story and then work backwards is like tying your shoe with one hand only.

To come up with the ending to a story and then work backwards is like tying your shoe with one hand only.

I write when the urge hits me, getting the words down as fast as I can type and then I step back from what I just wrote and start a dialectical process where I begin challenging my own writing.

Write in a disciplined manner, but write in a way that is natural to the individual's thought processes.

My first novel took 12 years to complete because life got in my way.

I've been a writer for 42 years and, yes, it is a full time job for me. Not a hobby, but serious work.

I do not write by any set time schedule. I realize there are many writers who follow a daily regime where they arise at 6:00 a.m., do some sort of exercise, eat breakfast and then sit down and produce words for a three to four hour period.

You are not a beautiful, unique snowflake... This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time.

Pakistan has made no mention of ending our tests. We have a missile program, and it is in the national interest whatever we want to do.

Death doesn't frighten me; now I can think peacefully of ending a long life.

Love is life's end, but never ending. Love is life's wealth, never spent, but ever spending. Love's life's reward, rewarded in rewarding.

To come up with the ending to a story and then work backwards is like tying your shoe with one hand only.

I caution against beginning or ending a quotation with ellipses.

We expect President Bush to implement his own vision of a two-state solution, the birth of the Palestinian State and the ending of the occupation that started in 1967.

It's precisely the disappointing stories, which have no proper ending and therefore no proper meaning, that sound true to life.

I like to compare the holiday season with the way a child listens to a favorite story. The pleasure is in the familiar way the story begins, the anticipation of familiar turns it takes, the familiar moments of suspense, and the familiar climax and ending.

What then is tragedy? In the Elizabethan period it was assumed that a play ending in death was a tragedy, but in recent years we have come to understand that to live on is sometimes far more tragic than death.

The principle of the endless melody is the perpetual becoming of a music that never had any reason for starting, any more than it has any reason for ending.

Laughter is not a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is the best ending for one.

A hard beginning maketh a good ending.

I felt Brighton was a perfect ending to a really interesting career.

Ending racial discrimination in jury selection can be accomplished only by eliminating peremptory challenges entirely.

Writing is truly a creative art - putting word to a blank piece of paper and ending up with a full-fledged story rife with character and plot.

It's a tough job to tell a story when the audience already knows the ending, and the ending is bleak.

My intent was to carry out my duty as a doctor, to end their suffering. Unfortunately, that entailed, in their cases, ending of the life.

Watergate provides a model case study of the interaction and powers of each of the branches of government. It also is a morality play with a sad and dramatic ending.

Avoid extremes: be moderate In saving and in spending; An equable and easy gait Will win an easy ending.

A better ending could not have been scripted. Of course, if we had won, that would have been better.

My answer to those who oppose my appointment as CEO is that this is really a decision of the YWCA. They want to strengthen their grassroots to advocate on behalf of women's and children's empowerment and ending racism.

There are some things you can't share without ending up liking each other.

Anyway, the title The War of the Insect Gods came before we had that ending, before we knew they had become gods. That we knew the evolutionary cycle they went through. Before we even knew anything about that. We had an ending.

If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.

Generally my typical books have lots of twists and turns a big surprise ending and then usually another surprise at the end and ideally, as in Garden of Beasts, we get to the very end and we find at the last few pages that there's yet another surprise.

Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.

All lovely things will have an ending, All lovely things will fade and die; And youth, that's now so bravely spending, Will beg a penny by and by.

The more irrational of us are worried about the millennium ending - as if a date would really matter.

Earmarks have become a symbol of a Congress that has broken faith with the people. This earmark ban shows the American people we are listening and we are dead serious about ending business as usual in Washington.

I had this really great amazing thing happen where I almost finished the book and I really needed to come up with an ending and I decided to go back and re-read the book and see if I could come up with an ending.

To tell you the truth, in my work, love is always in opposition to the elements. It creates dilemmas. It brings in suffering. We can't live with it, and we can't live without it. You'll rarely find a happy ending in my work.

As the time goes by, you change, your learn new things, your attitude is different. For the moment, I'm still enjoying ski racing so much that it would be difficult for me to think about ending my career.

Intimacies between women often go backwards, beginning in revelations and ending in small talk.

The timing of death, like the ending of a story, gives a changed meaning to what preceded it.

Republicans in Congress boosted the economy by cutting taxes and ending programs that don't work.

Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a friendship, and it is far the best ending for one.

I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle and end.

Ending up-front fees should make it far easier for all students to go to university as they will no longer have to pay up to /1,125 out of their loans at the start of each year. Student loans will also rise to meet average living costs.

Our combat mission is ending, but our commitment to Iraq's future is not.

Compromise is but the sacrifice of one right or good in the hope of retaining another - too often ending in the loss of both.

I don't begin a novel or a screenplay until I know the ending. And I don't mean only that I have to know what happens. I mean that I have to hear the actual sentences. I have to know what atmosphere the words convey.