Most of us can recall the first books or movies that made us cry. In my case, it was the iconic ending of the film, “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” It certainly wouldn’t have mattered to me that this outcome was never in Truman Capote’s novella, which had a more ambivalent conclusion and no salvation for the cat. I was just a little kid crying along with an anguished young woman as she searched in the rain for the cat she’d thrown into an alley. To this day, if I hear even the first three notes of “Moon River” I’ve already lost it.

Robert Frost once observed, “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.” It’s hard to imagine that the stoic bard of New England rural life ever cried alone in his room while writing late at night, but his words still hit home.

Why would I want to write anything that brings more tears into this world, even if those tears are from total strangers? Of course, I know that Frost was speaking metaphorically about how we experience empathy through literature. If I cry — or laugh out loud — when revising a scene, I take it as a sign from my fictional characters that I‘m on the right track. It’s like when my cat “slow blinks” at me; it feels as if something mysterious but real was communicated between us.

I’ve been deeply touched when readers of my first novel Gallows Road confided in me that they wept at the ending, or any other point in the book. It’s true that I’d been teary-eyed a few times when writing — and rewriting — certain scenes in which my main character faced her death sentence. Now it’s happening again as I complete a final edit of my second novel, “Vee’s Bracelet” to be published next fall. Those who have begged me for a “happier” story this time will find more laughter and surprises in addition to some heartbreak in this new work.

Maybe Robert Frost was right about a writer’s tears, but I’m just as grateful to Audrey Hepburn and a beat-up, soaking wet old alley cat. All three taught me the value of a good cry to remind us we’re only human.

Photo: Audrey Hepburn and Cat in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.