Beautiful Ruins

by Jess Walter

“What kind of wife would I be if I left your father simply because he is dead?”

Then she smiled, and in that instant, if such a thing were possible, Pasquale fell in love, and he would remain in love for the rest of his life—not so much with the woman, whom he didn’t even know, but with the moment.

“All we have is the story we tell. Everything we do, every decision we make, our strength, weakness, motivation, history, and character—what we believe—none of it is real; it’s all part of the story we tell. But here’s the thing: it’s our goddamned story!”

his estimation, the more you lived the more regret and longing you suffered, that life was a glorious catastrophe—

Émile Zola: I am here to live out loud.

“Sometimes,” she said, “what we want to do and what we must do are not the same.” She put a hand on his shoulder. “Pasqo, the smaller the space between your desire and what is right, the happier you will be.”

He believed he could spot an American anywhere by that quality—that openness, that stubborn belief in possibility,

man wants many things in life, but when one of them is also the right thing, he would be a fool not to choose it.

the weight of responsibility, bathing and feeding and . . . everything, that weight growing as her cognition fades, until she is like a thing he cares for, a heavy thing he pulls through the last uphill part of their life together;

this idea that true sacrifice is painless.