All sorrows can be borne, if you put them into a story, or tell a story about them.
- Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen), as read in The Man Made of Words, N. Scott Momaday
Blixen's statement rings true with Proust's comment regarding suffering:
Nothing will extirpate suffering, nothing will eliminate it. Our purpose is not to dry it up, but to create outlets for it.
- Gustave Flaubert in a letter to Louise Colet, 1852