
Variant: I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows. But now the damned things have learned to swim, and now decency and good behavior weary me.
Source: P.S. I Love You
Variant: I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows. But now the damned things have learned to swim, and now decency and good behavior weary me.
“In my dream, I was drowning my sorrows
But my sorrows they learned to swim”
“I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows, but now the damned things have learned to swim.”
Quote in a letter to Ella Wolfe, "Wednesday 13," 1938, as cited in Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo by Hayden Herrera (1983) ISBN 0-06-091127-1 , p. 197. In a footnote (p.467), Herrera writes that Kahlo had heard this joke from her friend, the poet José Frías.
1925 - 1945
Variant: I tried to drown my sorrows but the bastards learned how to swim.
“He tried to drown his troubles but they knew how to swim.”
“Drink today, and drown all sorrow;
You shall perhaps not do't tomorrow.”
Act II, scene ii.
Rollo, Duke of Normandy, or The Bloody Brother, (c. 1617; revised c. 1627–30; published 1639)
“All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them.”
As quoted in The Human Condition (1958) by Hannah Arendt. This appears as part of a statement in a 1957 interview where she speaks of a friend's comments about her:
I am not a novelist, really not even a writer; I am a storyteller. One of my friends said about me that I think all sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them, and perhaps this is not entirely untrue. To me, the explanation of life seems to be its melody, its pattern. And I feel in life such an infinite, truly inconceivable fantasy.
Interview with Bent Mohn in The New York Times Book Review (3 November 1957)
Paraphrased variant : All suffering is bearable if it is seen as part of a story.
“Trust life, and it will teach you, in joy and sorrow, all you need to know.”
“You can't hate someone until you know what it might be like to love them.”
Source: Vanishing Acts