Anatomy of Love: A Natural History of Mating, Marriage, and Why We Stray

Smiling, it seems, we were born to do. Some infants begin to imitate their mother’s smile within thirty-six hours after birth, and all babies begin social smiling at about three months of age.9 Even children born blind and deaf burst into radiant grins, although they have never seen this facial gesture in those around them.

Perhaps it is the eye—not the heart, the genitals, or the brain—that is the initial organ of romance, for the gaze (or stare) often triggers the human smile.

as Plato aptly wrote in The Symposium: “The God of love lives in a state of need.”

Journalist: Why do you only write about relationships?
Nora Ephron:Is there something else?

Perhaps it is the eye—not the heart, the genitals, or the brain—that is the initial organ of romance, for the gaze (or stare) often triggers the human smile

A universal pattern of female flirting emerged. Women from places as different as the jungles of Amazonia, the salons of Paris, and the highlands of New Guinea apparently flirt with the same sequence of expressions.

Some 85% of cultures permit a man to have several wives,

I was recently traveling in the highlands of New Guinea in the back of a pickup truck, talking with a man who had three wives. I asked him how many wives he would like to have. There was a pause as he rubbed his chin. I wondered: Would he say five? Ten? Twenty-five wives? He leaned toward me and whispered: None