“The only thing I ever hope to do as a writer is to make people feel less alone, to make them feel more human, to make them feel what I have felt so many times as a reader: stories have the power to save us by illuminating the most profoundly beautiful and terrible things about our existence.

Strayed here lays out her philosophy about the power of literature to keep us company and relate to others as we undergo the tribulations and joys of the human condition. The repetition of the phrase “to make them feel” indicates her belief that the primary channel of literature is emotional rather than intellectual. It is, after all, through our emotions that we realize our humanity and connect with one another.

“I suppose you think this has nothing to do with your question, Johnny, but it has everything to do with my answer. It has everything to with every answer I have ever given to anyone. It’s Sugar’s genesis story.”

In her reply to the first problem in the book, that of a man called Johnny who claims he does not know the meaning of love, Sugar relates a story about how her mother’s dying word to her was “love.” Aware that her correspondent might think she is going off course, she addresses him conversationally, stating the importance of love to her perspective on every matter. Her insistence that it is important for Johnny to understand where she is coming from indicates that she wants to connect personally with her readers, not merely advise them from a distance. The reference to Sugar’s “genesis story” refers to the Biblical first book of Genesis and is apt, as this is the first letter that appears in her own book and sets the