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.

I know I'm not a self-indulgent idiot; I also know I'm not the second coming of Deepak Chopra. If I had believed either of those, or both, as some people do when they get famous, that's when the mental illness arrives.

My career started young and I was really ambitious, and then I had success and I hung out with people who were much older. I think I might have been temporally misplaced, so I thought I was 40. It was a premature midlife crisis.

That is who Barack Obama is - a person of admirable character - and that is who he has remained for me over these last four years. I have not agreed with his every decision, but never once have I seen him break his cool, lose his composure, or abandon his insightful perspective - even during the most serious and/or absurd national disasters.

I never thought I'd spend all my life with Gary. I suppose I was quite cynical about marriage. But with Jude, I knew right from the beginning: there was an electricity I'd never felt before. It was so easy, we talked for hours. It was a relief, really.

I've always said men should study romance novels to find out how women think and what they want, both during the courtship phase and in a lifelong partner.

Some of the best advice I got from a close friend is marriage is always looked at from the world as 50/50 as to working together to make that 100 percent.

There is a difference between civil partnerships and marriage. That difference does not mean one is better than another.