There is no choice more intensely personal, after all, than whom you choose to marry; that choice tells us, to a large extent, who you are.

Oh my God, baby, you are in so much trouble.

A fish and a bird may indeed fall in love, but where shall they live?

Yet what keeps me from dissolving right now into a complete fairy-tale shimmer is this solid truth, a truth which has veritably built my bones over the last few years--I was not rescued by a prince; I was the administrator of my own rescue.

The fantasy of the wedding day is that it represents undeniable public and private truth that you have been chosen. For that one day, you are the most valuable creature in the world - a treasure, a princess, a prize.

Look - I understand that an unexamined life is not worth living, but do you think I could someday have an unexamined lunch?

Here's the thing: the unit of reverence in Europe is the family, which is why a child born today of unmarried parents in Sweden has a better chance of growing up in a house with both of his parents than a child born to a married couple in America. Here we revere the couple, there they revere the family.