The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915)
Source: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Other Poems
Context: Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all: —
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
Source: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Others
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915)
“I like my coffee hot and strong. Like I like my women: hot and strong… with a spoon in them.”
Glorious (1997)
Variant: I like my coffee like I like my women... in a plastic cup.
Source: Eddie Izzard: Dress to Kill
“If you cannot stand a spoon upright in the cup, then the coffee is too weak.”
Interview, New York Times, Dec 1, 2015. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/22/business/international/indonesia-economy-interest-rates.html?_r=0
2015
“Can I still smoke my cigarettes and have my coffee”
Peaceful Valley
29 (2005)
Letter to János Bolyai (4 April 1820)
Published in: Samu Benkő (ed.), Bólyai-levelek, Kriterion, 1975, p. 123
As quoted in: O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Farkas Bolyai" http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/history/Biographies/Bolyai_Farkas.html, MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, University of St Andrews.
Having himself spent a lifetime unsuccessfully trying to prove Euclid's fifth postulate, Farkas discouraged his son János from any further attempt.
Source: 1980's, Off the Wall: Robert Rauschenberg and the Art world of Our Time, 1980, p. 89
