Three Days in June

by Anne Tyler

Anger feels so much better than sadness. Cleaner, somehow, and more definite. But then when the anger fades, the sadness comes right back again the same as ever.

Could I have this dance, for the rest of my life? What a cataclysmic question, when you stopped to think about it. I wondered how it was that anyone on earth ever found the courage to marry.

Sometimes when I find out what’s on other people’s minds I honestly wonder if we all live on totally separate planets.

That’s something you forget when you’ve been on your own awhile: those married-couple conversations that continue intermittently for weeks, sometimes, branching out and doubling back and looping into earlier strands like a piece of crochet work.