“I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows, but now the damned things have learned to swim.”

“I tried to drown my sorrows, but the bastards learned how to swim, and now I am overwhelmed by this decent and good feeling.”

“Old Mathews drank to drown sorrow, which is the strongest swimmer in the world.”

“If you know someone who tries to drown their sorrows, you might tell them sorrows know how to swim.”

“I lived my grief; I slept mourning and ate sorrow and drank tears. I ignored all else.”

“Let them think what they liked, but I didn't mean to drown myself. I meant to swim till I sank -- but that's not the same thing.”

“I still love you. And sometimes, my friend, the love that I have, and can't give to you, crushes the breath from my chest. Sometimes, even now, my heart is drowning in a sorrow that has no stars without you, and no laughter, and no sleep.”

“I have learned one thing: not to look down
Too much upon the damned.”

“The bare bones of my life are almost unbearable. I was born during the First World War. I spent my adolescence in the Depression, and when I came of age, I was involved in the Second World War. That sounds a pretty horrible series of events. They seem perfectly natural to me. I prize the Depression, for instance, because I learned the value of things in the Depression that a way people who don't have to worry about such things never learned to prize it really, I believe. And the Second World War was a wonderful thing to be with. It's now called "the Good War." We usually referred to it as "this damned war."”

“I'm stronger because I had to be.
I'm smarter because of my mistakes.
I'm happier because of the sadness I have had to know…
and now wiser
because I've learned.”