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.

Learning to heal ruptures is a key to having a successful relationship. Adam and Eve model that for all of us. In Hollywood love is a choice, and you live happily ever after. In real life love is a series of choices. You make the choice to be with a person over and over again.

The higher the joy is not the light, it's the reflection. The greater pleasure is not climbing up; it's handing down

Americans know more about religion than almost any other topic.

Adam and Eve - and especially Eve - are victims of the greatest character assassination the world has ever known. Eve is not secondary. Eve, if anything, is the great initiator in the story. She's the first independent woman. For me, rediscovering that Eve was the greatest bad**s women of all time was a revelation.

When you hit the unimaginable, the only answer is imaginativeness. You have to heal with the person that you're suffering with. You have to write a new chapter in your story. A relationship can be a sacred thing, but it's going to be difficult. There are going to be challenges. You are going to have pain. But working it through and being resilient is as sacred and meaningful as having a "Hollywood" romance.

Cancer is a passport to intimacy. It is an invitation, maybe even a mandate, to enter the most vital arenas of human life, the most sensitive and the most frightening, the ones that we never want to go to - but when we do go there, we feel incredibly transformed.