You can't go back home again

Penne (my dog) had to be with Ron and Lee (her “day” dog sitters) today.  We got to their home and as soon as Penne jumped out of my car she began to walk back to home!  (Don’t worry, once she was inside with Ron and Lee she settled down and was very comfortable).

This reminded me of the phrase “you can’t go back home”.  Thanks to Wikipedia I discovered that it originated in a novel by Thomas Wolfe (“You can’t go home again”, pub 1940).

Here are a couple of quotations from Wolfe’s novel. (George Webber is the protagonist in this novel.)

1.     “Perhaps this is our strange and haunting paradox in America--that we are fixed and certain only when we are in movement. At any rate, this is how it seemed to young George Webber, who was never so assured of his purpose as when he was going somewhere on a train. And he never had the sense of home so much as when he felt that he was going there. It was only when he got there that his homelessness began.”

2.     “You can't go back home to your family, back home to your childhood, ... back home to a young man's dreams of glory and of fame ... back home to places in the country, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time - back home to the escapes of Time and Memory.”

Location: Sarasota, FL, USA

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