More from The Times, Love Letters

The letter from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is my favorites so far. It read like an actual love letter with the sensibilities of a writer. Here is an excerpt discussing the importance of liking:

Yesterday, too, I realised that I have never told you how much I like you - this before your text, by the way. Love is different. Love is ridiculous. Love can just happen, as it did to you when you saw me and asked Ifeanyi to introduce us (exactly seventeen months and three days ago) and to me as you tried to charm me with your watery knowledge of Achebe's work, but like requires reason. And yesterday I marvelled at how much I have come to like you. I like that you know when to leave and quietly shut my door and that when you do I never worry that you are not coming back. I like your cooking (I have never complimented you because I keep imagining those silly women who over-praise men for cooking, and those silly mothers who like to say, 'My son can cook-oh, so no woman will use food to tempt him'). I like the way your butt looks in your jeans, that flat elegance that you don't like me to point out, and I like that you make futile attempts at the gym to grow muscles we both know you never will and I like that you underline sentences in books to show me. I like that you like me and that your liking me makes me like myself.

I will, by the way, never write anything like this to you again. So smile all you want now, atulu