Jennifer Wright's new book, It Ended Badly: 13 of the Worst Breakups in History, opens with two quotes — one from Buddha and one from Taylor Swift. In the context of Wright's book, on sale today , this unlikely duo actually makes perfect sense. Presenting us with 13 seemingly different breakups from as far back as ancient Rome, Wright bends the timeline of romantic disasters and shows us just how little has changed in how people uncouple. It's an exercise in solidarity — even queens have struggled with recovering from breakups — and a source of comfort: If you still feel guilty about that one drunken phone call to your ex way too long after the split, this book is for you.Below, check out highlights from our conversation with Wright, and feel secure in knowing that you've never hand-written hundreds of letters to an ex, beheaded anyone, or built a sex doll in a lost lover's image. And if you have done any of these things, well, now you know you're in good company."There are so many books out there that tell you how to behave well during a breakup, and, I don’t know about everyone else, but most of the embarrassing things that I’ve done in my life have been immediately after a breakup. So I wanted to write a book that focused on people who behaved in a way that was probably worse than any of us have behaved. No matter what you might have done after a breakup — maybe you drunk-texted your ex a few times — but you haven’t beheaded him. I was hoping that people could read some of these stories and have their own breakup behavior put in perspective.""One of my favorite lessons from the book is that so few of these people’s lives, unless they actually tried to murder their ex, are defined by their breakup. You could be like Edith Wharton, who wrote hundreds of letters to her ex, which he largely declined to reply to, and use that pain and turn it into fantastic novels, and have a really beautiful life where you end up on the French Riviera... Or you could be like [Austrian artist] Oskar Kokoschka, who built a giant sex doll of his ex-girlfriend and went on to have an incredibly happy, 40-year-long marriage to another woman, who was seemingly not put off by the sex doll in his past. No matter what you’ve done, you’re probably going to be able to move on from it and hopefully be a stronger person. Unless you tried to kill your ex; then, that’s a problem."