Walk away in silence

January 29, 2007 11:27 PM

Vaguely remembered literary (or something else) filter. The only way to get (somewhere? I forget... wherever it is you want to go...) is to walk away from it... What is that from?

Seriously. This is driving me crazy. What's it from? A book? A movie? A poem? A song? I can't remember. Hope me!

posted by dersins to media & arts (8 answers total)

Would it be The Farthest-Away Mountain? The only way to get to the Farthest-Away Mountain was to turn around and go back.
posted by sleeplessunderwater at 12:07 AM on January 30, 2007 [1 favorite]

There's the (attributed to) Yogi Berra line:

"You've got to be very careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there."

But I don't think that's what you're going for.
posted by stovenator at 1:40 AM on January 30, 2007

I'm not sure if this is what you were thinking of, and I can't believe that I'm having trouble finding the exact quotation, but doesn't Joyce's A Portrait of The Artist As A Young Man have the line, "the best way to love Ireland is to leave it"?
posted by kimota at 4:26 AM on January 30, 2007

That sort of thing happens in Through the Looking Glass.
posted by JanetLand at 5:22 AM on January 30, 2007

kimota: "I'm not sure if this is what you were thinking of, and I can't believe that I'm having trouble finding the exact quotation, but doesn't Joyce's A Portrait of The Artist As A Young Man have the line, "the best way to love Ireland is to leave it"?

No. Ctrl-F here.
posted by koeselitz at 7:42 AM on January 30, 2007

Are you getting mixed up with, "If you love [her/it] let [her/it] go"?
posted by pollystark at 8:04 AM on January 30, 2007

It's from the movie (and maybe the book?) Big Fish. The only way the father character could leave the enchanted small town was by not leaving -- so he left by walking out of it backwards.
posted by Kraftmatic Adjustable Cheese at 10:55 AM on January 30, 2007

Or was it possibly a fairy tale? I know I read one once (don't remember the name or what it was about, but it was a questy thing) where to get somewhere you had to give up, and someone tells the hero to give up along the way. Of course the hero doesn't do it at first, but when they do, they get there.
posted by sleeplessunderwater at 3:27 PM on February 4, 2007