In a letter dated August 1, 1918
Context: Getting down to brass tacks, how in the Hell are you going to explain general American n- 'I' except genetically? It's disturbing, I know, but (more) non-committal conservatism is only dodging, after all, isn't it? Great simplifications are in store for us. … It seems to me that only now that is American linguistics becoming really interesting, at least in its ethnological bearings.
“I can't understand these chaps who go round American universities explaining how they write poems: It's like going round explaining how you sleep with your wife.”
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Philip Larkin 42
English poet, novelist, jazz critic and librarian 1922–1985Related quotes
Variant: It’s pathetic how we can’t live with the things we can’t understand. How we need everything labeled and explained and deconstructed.
Source: Asfixia
Interview with Martin Gayford, "Hockney and the secrets of the Old Masters" http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2001/09/22/bagay22.xml The Telegraph(22 September 2001)
2000s
Go Rin No Sho (1645), The Water Book
Frankie says... http://www.zttaat.com/article.php?title=751 at zttaat.com, Accessed May 2014.
“Things are going round and round in my head--or maybe my head is going round and round in things.”
Source: Howl's Moving Castle
“The force that moves you is a circular breath
of life and death going round and round and round.”
"The Wheel"
Shooting Rubberbands at the Stars (1988)
Context: All your thoughts are in another head.
Your dreams are sleepin' in a different bed.
The force that moves you is a circular breath
of life and death going round and round and round.
Humming 7/4
Lyrics, My Story
“No, I'm not going to explain it. If you can't figure it out, you didn't want to know anyway…”
[1991Aug7.180856.2854@netlabs.com, 1991]
Usenet postings, 1991