I think maybe I’d still nod and smile and have lunch with him. I think maybe I’d still go to the Noam Chomsky documentary later that evening. And maybe I’d even marry him a couple of weeks later. Is it ever really a waste of time to love someone, truly and deeply, with everything you have?

What I want to measure, what I can control, is my own response to life’s challenges.

An Americentric worldview, they believed, was incompatible with Christian values on the grounds that God loved all nations equally.

In my opinion, sexiness comes down to three things: chemistry, sense of humor, and treatment of waitstaff at restaurants.

Is it ever really a waste of time to love someone, truly and deeply, with everything you have?

I would rather get a PhD than stand to reach for toilet paper. Though some readers might emphasize the similarities between the two activities.

The idea is that the woman's heritage and background are just as important as the man's. Many women see taking a man's name as a gesture of symbolic oppression. It's like saying to the woman, 'Who you are as a person isn't as important as who I am.

I'm not really a chicken-patty kinda girl," I said.

This was as true and sweet as ice cream in December. We each had our different priorities. If you held them lightly and used a plastic spoon they were nothing to get stuck on.

When you're young, faith is often a matter of rules. What you should do and shouldn't do, that kind of thing. But as you get older, you realize that faith is really a matter of relationship - with God, with the people around you, with the members of your community.