“To be or not to be.” That’s Shakespeare — you might know him. “Britney Spears goes off the rails.” That’s on the cover of tabloids. “I love you” holds such power. A few words can distill lifetimes.

At Reader’s Digest, we love stories. From exciting thrillers to harrowing tales of survival, stories remind us of love, loss, and what it means to be human. And a good story doesn’t have to be long.

As a founding editor of SMITH Magazine in 2006, Larry Smith proposed the idea of six-word memoirs as one way for people to express their life stories. The memoirs were meant as interpretations and ...