December 27, 2007

I do have quite a bit of faith

“I do have quite a bit of faith in the endurance of love. We always hear about divorce statistics, for example; what we never hear about is the endurance statistics, which are also amazingly impressive. If we look at it the other way around, say, fifty percent of marriages survive. That seems an extraordinary achievement. None of that ever seems to find its way into fiction, the endurance of love. It sounds stunningly boring, of course, when you talk about the endurance of love– maybe there’s a better phrase– and no one pretends that an enduring love is uninterrupted. I think love has always been disrupted and renewed…” –Carol Shields, “Always a Book-Oriented Kid” from Eleanor Wachtel’s Random Illuminations