“In wrapping things up the writer had a choice: the "happy" ending in which the two former enemies are rescued and we can imagine them going forward with their lives as friends the "realistic" ending in which they are rescued but immediately resume their quarrel: or the cruelly ironic ending where fate takes a hand. The class was about evenly divided among the three endings. For Me though there was no choice the writer absolutely had to go with the ironic one. What would be the point I argued of a story like that with a happy ending The two men walking off into the sunset together and unharmed isnt an ending-it's a cop-out.”

“Would you like to hear my story, Bella? It doesn't have a happy ending - but which of ours does? If we had happy endings, we'd all be under gravestones now.”

“We'd sit with a big bowl of popcorn, wrapped together in a queen-size blanket, and would escape to a place where magic was ours for the taking, where men rescued the people they loved instead of abandoning them. A place where, no matter how bad things looked at that moment, there would always be a happy ending.”

“The part when they are together for a while, the two of them, before things go wrong. The way things ended always obliterated the genuine happiness that had come before and that shouldn't be the case.”

“For a second, two seconds, they had exchanged an equivocal glance, and that was the end of the story. But even that was a memorable event, in the locked loneliness in which one had to live.”

“Why are the only happy endings the ones where the couples get together?” I ask. “Can’t they just be friends? Can’t that be a happy ending too?”