A Quote by Stephen Graham Jones

Making people laugh is so much more difficult than making them sad. Too much fiction defaults to the somber, the tragic. This is because sad endings are easy in comparison - happy endings aren't at all simple to earn, especially when writing to an audience jaded by them.

Stephen Graham Jones

Quote Topics

Audience Because Comparison Difficult Earn Easy Endings Fiction Happy Happy Ending Happy Endings Jaded Laugh Making Making People Laugh More Much People Sad Sad Ending Simple Somber Than Them Too Too Much Tragic Writing

Quote Author

Stephen Graham Jones
American - Author
Born: 1972

My family doesn't do happy endings. We do sad endings or frustrating endings or no endings at all. We are hardwired to expect the next interruption or disappearance or broken promise.

Hope Solo

I'm a hopeful romantic who adores novels with happy endings, because there are enough sad endings in real life.

Tammara Webber

And in real life endings aren't always neat, whether they're happy endings, or whether they're sad endings.

Stephen King

I love the theater as much as music, and the whole idea of getting across to an audience and making them laugh, making them cry - just making them feel - is paramount to me.

Stephen Sondheim

When we're young, we like happy endings. When we're a little older, we think happy endings are unrealistic and so we prefer bad but credible endings. When we're older still, we realize happy endings aren't so bad after all.

Margaret Atwood

You can see desperation in people who are too eager to laugh because they're in such a hurry not to look at what's confronting them in their lives and that's kind of sad because there's a kind of pornographic aspect to it, of making some sort of pain go away, of hovering around a pain, making yourself numb, not feel anything.

Dylan Moran

I used to feel defensive when people would say, 'Yes, but your books have happy endings', as if that made them worthless, or unrealistic. Some people do get happy endings, even if it's only for a while. I would rather never be published again than write a downbeat ending.

Marian Keyes

I find it ironic that happy endings now are called fairytale endings because there's nothing happy about most fairytale endings.

Joe Wright

A lot of thought goes into making people laugh. Comedy is never easy. Making people cry is easier than making them laugh.

Johnny Lever

I don't trust tragedies much. It's easy to make a person sad by showing him something tragic. We all recognize when sad things happen: someone dies, someone loses a loved one, young love is crushed. It's much harder to make a man laugh-what's funny to one person isn't funny to another.

Ilona Andrews

Endings of one rook and pawns are about the most common sort of endings arising on the chess board. Yet though they do occur so often, few have mastered them thoroughly. They are often of a very difficult nature, and sometimes while apparently very simple they are in reality extremely intricate.

Jose Raul Capablanca

In my newspaper days, your endings could be literally sliced off in the composing room, so it was dangerous to get attached to them. Yet I think this has made me work harder on endings in fiction.

Laura Lippman

I watch so much TV, it's sad. I watch 'Happy Endings', '30 Rock', 'Parks and Rec', 'The Office', 'Eagleheart', 'Children's Hospital'. 'Modern Family' I guess I'm still kinda watching.

Anders Holm

Happy endings were never handed out. You had to fight for them, earn them with bruised hearts and sacrifices.

Kim Harrison

Madge: I don't know why I keep shouting at them. The Doctor: Because every time you see them happy you remember how sad they're going to be. And it breaks your heart. Because what's the point in them being happy now if they're going to be sad later. The answer is, of course, because they are going to be sad later. ~ The Doctor, the Widow, and the Wardrobe