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

If you’d like to become the emotionally evolved man it seems so very clear to me that you are on the brink of becoming, you’re going to have to evolve beyond asking every kitten you meet if she’s your mother. She isn’t. You are.

The most terrible and beautiful and interesting things happen in a life. For some of you, those things have already happened. Whatever happens to you belongs to you. Make it yours. Feed it to yourself even if it feels impossible to swallow. Let it nurture you, because it will.

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

The most fascinating thing to me about your letter is that buried beneath all the anxiety and sorrow and fear and self-loathing, there’s arrogance at its core.

You have to be brave enough to build the intimacy you deserve.

Do it. Doing so will free your relationship from the tense tangle that withholding weaves. Do you realize that your refusal to utter the word “love” to your lover has created a force field all its own? Withholding distorts reality. It makes the people who do the withholding ugly and small-hearted. It makes the people from whom things are withheld c

You cannot convince people to love you. This is an absolute rule. No one will ever give you love because you want him or her to give it. Real love moves freely in both directions. Don’t waste your time on anything else.

There’s a saying about drug addicts that they stop maturing emotionally at the age they started using,

When I was done writing it, I understood that things happened just as they were meant to. That I couldn’t have written my book before I did.