We all like stories that make us cry. It’s so nice to feel sad when you’ve nothing in particular to feel sad about.

The remark points to the paradoxical pleasure people take in “safe” sorrow—emotions experienced at a remove through art. A tragic story offers a controlled space to release tears, practice empathy, and feel the depth of sadness without the real-world costs of personal loss. The second sentence suggests that such sadness can be restorative: when life is emotionally flat or untroubled, a moving narrative supplies a cathartic intensity and a sense of being fully alive. Implicitly, it also hints at how storytelling legitimizes emotion, giving permission to grieve, soften, and connect, even when one’s own circumstances provide no obvious reason for tears.