Quote by Hanya Yanagihara: “The only trick of friendship is to find people who are better than you.”

Friendship isn't just comfort or company — it's growth. Surrounding yourself with people whose strengths exceed yours in some way pulls you toward becoming more. It's a generous idea: the best friendships are ones where you're both reaching upward, not just confirming each other as you already are.

Yanagihara published A Little Life in 2015, a novel that provoked fierce debate about the ethics of depicting extreme suffering in fiction. Its exploration of chosen family and male friendship resonated strongly during a period of intense cultural conversation about vulnerability and emotional intimacy.

American novelist and editor-in-chief of T: The New York Times Style Magazine. Her 2015 novel A Little Life became one of the most emotionally intense and widely debated literary works of its decade, exploring friendship, trauma, and survival.