Robert Altman on the Happy End

I don't believe films have a beginning or an end. The only real end I know of is death. You can pretend something has a happy ending: the boy kisses the girl and they walk into their little cottage and that's the end of the story. Only, the next morning he wakes up and sees her kissing the milkman. He gets his shotgun and blows the milkman's head off, cuts up his wife into little pieces, and puts her in the milk bottles. That's not a happy ending at all! When something looks like a happy ending, it's really just a happy stopping point.