Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

by Cheryl Strayed

stories have the power to save us by illuminating the most profoundly beautiful and terrible things about our existence.

life is short and that all we have to offer, in the end, is love.

The best thing you can possibly do with your life is to tackle the motherfucking shit out of love.

We are obligated to the people we care about and who we allow to care about us, whether we say we love them or not. Our main obligation is to be forthright—to elucidate the nature of our affection when such elucidation would be meaningful or clarifying.

Withholding distorts reality. It makes the people who do the withholding ugly and small-hearted. It makes the people from whom things are withheld crazy and desperate and incapable of knowing what they actually feel.

Strategic and coy are for jackasses. Be brave. Be authentic. Practice saying the word “love” to the people you love so when it matters the most to say it, you will.