The most successful families embrace and elevate their family history, particularly their failures, setbacks and other missteps.

The biggest idea that I have learned - I basically went in to write a book about Adam and Eve, ended up writing a book about love. And what did I learn? Love is a story you tell with another person.

My name is Bruce Feiler, and I'm an explainaholic. I first heard this word used to describe Isaac Asimov, and I knew instantly that I suffered from the same condition. It's the incurable desire to tell, shape, share, occasionally exaggerate, often elongate, and inevitably bungle a good story.

I was so naive about writing, I went to the public library and checked out the only volume they had on the topic - an academic treatise about publishing from the WWII era.

We no longer just take religious identity from our parents, so what's going on? Why are people going to this series, why are people reading so many books about religion? It's because they want answers. The answers are no longer just passed down from generation to generation. It's harder for people. In effect, you have to roll up your sleeve and ask the questions. But if you do it, if you forge your own identity, it can be much more personal and much more meaningful to you.

Love is a story we tell with another person. It's cocreation through conarration. When you hit bumps in the road and challenges, you write a new chapter in your story together. Love is the constant act of revising and retelling your own story in real time. You don't do it by yourself. You do it with someone else. The only way you do that is to talk to each other and create a shared narrative.

After college, I wanted to learned about myself as an American, so I left the United States and went to Japan.