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.