“I have a confession to make. I don’t really want to know. I like a happy ending as well as the next person, but I love the mystery and the uncertainty and the electric current of possibility. There’s a reason the best love stories end at the first kiss. Jane Austen had this down; it’s all about the chase. We’re not really interested in Elizabeth and Darcy after the wedding bells fade, or in Cinderella and her prince after the slipper is returned.”

“I felt like a Jane Austen heroine all of a sudden, confusedly looking on at all the people she loves, their myriad unpredictable couplings and uncouplings. There would be no marriages at the end of this Austen novel, though, no happy endings, no endings at all. Just jokes and friendships and romances and delicious declarations of independence.”

“People like to talk about "Cinderella stories," but Cinderella didn't get her happy ending without lifting a finger. She had to show up at the ball, be charming and smooth, and win over the prince. Of course she had help along the way, but ultimately it was up to her to make the fairy-tale ending happen.”

“How about we just be Haven and Carmine?” she suggested. “We don’t know the ending, but we can always hope for the best.”“I like that,” he said. “Besides, there’s a reason we don’t know how the story ends.”“Why?”“Because it doesn’t.”

“Please tell a story about a girl who gets away.”I would, even if I had to adapt one, even if I had to make one up just for her. “Gets away from what, though?”“From her fairy godmother. From the happy ending that isn’t really happy at all. Please have her get out and run off the page altogether, to somewhere secret where words like ‘happy’ and ‘good’ will never find her.”“You don’t want her to be happy and good?”“I’m not sure what’s really meant by happy and good. I would like her to be free. Now. Please begin.”

“I wasn’t exactly a stranger to feeling like a princess—if you meant the princess in the first half of the fairy tale. Cinderella as a scullery maid. Snow White with the wicked stepmother. But I wasn’t used to what life was like after you meet the prince, after the slipper fits, after the kiss wakes you from your slumber. It would take some getting used to.”