“This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage” by Ann Patchett

Everything ends, every single relationship you will ever have in your lifetime is going to end. I'll die, you'll die, you'll get tired of each other. You don't always know how it's going to happen, but it is always going to happen. So stop trying to make everything permanent, it doesn't work. I want you to go out there and find some nice man you have no intention of spending the rest of your life with. You can be very, very happy with people you aren't going to marry.

—Ann Patchett in This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage

People seem able to love their dogs with an unabashed acceptance that they rarely demonstrate with family or friends. The dogs do not disappoint them, or if they do, the owners manage to forget about it quickly. I want to learn to love people like this, the way I love my dog, with pride and enthusiasm and a complete amnesia for faults. In short, to love others the way my dog loves me.

—Ann Patchett in This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage

I think the best vacation is the one that relieves me of my own life for a while and then makes me long for it again.

—Ann Patchett in This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage

Sometimes love does not have the most honorable beginnings, and the endings, the endings will break you in half. It's everything in between we live for.

—Ann Patchett in This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage

love honor

About Ann Patchett

Ann Patchett (born December 2, 1963) is an American author. In 2002, she received the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize for Fiction for her novel Bel Canto. Patchett's other novels include The Patron Saint of Liars (1992), Taft (1994), The Magician's Assistant (1997), Run (2007), State of Wonder (2011), Commonwealth (2016), The Dutch House (2019), and Tom Lake (2023). The Dutch House was a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

[from Wikipedia]

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