Goodreads asked Clark Hays:

Who is your favorite fictional couple, and why?

Clark Hays I’m a sucker for doomed and tragic romances, which I hope isn’t prophetic. I think it’s because love necessarily contains the seeds of destruction, once you appreciate just how much you have to lose. That's why Quasimodo and Esmerelda (from the Hunchback of Notre Dame), Tristan and Iseult (from the legends of King Arthur) and Lancelot and Guinivere (also from King Arthur) all make the list.

But my favorite couple, the saddest and most moving love story of them all, is Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac and Roxanne. In the first place, he’s a bad ass AND a poet, a rare combination, but mostly it's because he loves her so much and for so long without ever expressing himself (well, not directly anyway). And she loves him, at least she loves his words that move her so deeply and can only come from a pure heart. The ending, where he’s grievously injured and it’s too late, is one of the quietest, most powerful climaxes in literature. As they sit there in the half light as he recites the contents of the letter that broke her heart and sent the to the convent without having to read it, she realizes that she loved the wrong man all those years … well, it never fails to bring a tear to my eye.

Roxane: Yes. What's wrong?
Cyrano: With me? Nothing. It's only... only... (Displaying his bandaged hand, with a little smile.) This fatal wound.”

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