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

Eye contact seems to have an immediate effect

men and women often stare intently at a potential mate for about two to three seconds during which their pupils may dilate—a sign of extreme interest. Then the starer drops his or her eyelids and looks away

The gaze is probably the most striking human courting ploy. Eye language

Moved by the force of love,

fragments of the world seek out one another

so that a world may be.

—PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN

Love is a need, a craving, a drive to seek life’s greatest prize: a mating partner. We are born to love

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