“You can get the monkey off your back, but the circus never leaves town”
Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist
Source: Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith
1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)
Source: A Mencken Chrestomathy
“You can get the monkey off your back, but the circus never leaves town”
Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist
Source: Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith
“Just cause you got the monkey off your back doesn't mean the circus has left town.”
George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian
Werner Herzog (1942) German film director, producer, screenwriter, actor and opera director
Herzog on Herzog (2002)
Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator
Source: The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God
“Why the hell shouldn't I run away with the circus?”
Sara Gruen book Water for Elephants
Source: Water for Elephants
“Look at that little monkey run!”
Howard Cosell (1918–1995) American sportscaster
During the Halftime Highlights segment of Monday Night Football on September 24, 1973 when describing a 97-yard kickoff return by Washington Redskins player Herb Mul-Key against the St. Louis Cardinals.
Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) Novelist, screenwriter
"Great Thought" (19 February 1938), published in The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler (1976)
Context: There are two kinds of truth: the truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart. The first of these is science, and the second is art. Neither is independent of the other or more important than the other. Without art, science would be as useless as a pair of high forceps in the hands of a plumber. Without science, art would become a crude mess of folklore and emotional quackery. The truth of art keeps science from becoming inhuman, and the truth of science keeps art from becoming ridiculous.
E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet
"The Adult, the Artist and the Circus." Vanity Fair (October 1925)
Darren Shan (1972) Irish writer of English-language fiction under pen name, real name Darren O'Shaughnessy