My parents had an arranged marriage as did so many other people when I was growing up. My father came and had a life in the United States one way and my mother had a different one and I was very aware of those things. I continue to wonder about it and I will continue to write about it.

I have never been given to envy - save for the envy I feel toward those people who have the ability to make a marriage work and endure happily.

On both 'The Bachelor' and 'The Bachelorette ' it seems like proposing marriage is equivalent to saying 'Let's date.' Everyone knows those aren't the same things.

If your neighbor has a completely different view on abortion gay marriage stem cell research all of those things you still are both Americans. Neither one of you is necessarily more patriotic than the other. Neither loves their country any more than the other one does.

The problem for those who assert biblical authority in support of traditional definitions of marriage is that one could with equal validity assert that the lending of money or certain kinds of haircuts are forbidden by God or that slavery and the subjugation of women are authorized by the Lord.

Those who condemn gay marriage yet are silent or indifferent to the breakdown of marriage and divorce are in my view missing the real issue.

I read somewhere that Mitt and I have a 'storybook marriage.' Well in the storybooks I read there were never long long rainy winter afternoons in a house with five boys screaming at once. And those storybooks never seemed to have chapters called MS or breast cancer.

I didn't want to be one of those women who wake up at 63 years old and realize they've missed the window of opportunity for marriage and children.

Marriage is like a cage one sees the birds outside desperate to get in and those inside equally desperate to get out.

This is the miracle that happens every time to those who really love: the more they give the more they possess.